Boy Island

by Camden Joy

Camden Joy tells the picaresque tale of an American rock 'n roll band as they travel below both the Mason-Dixon Line and the cultural radar in early 1991. As the Persian Gulf War escalates in the background, we follow the four members (including a drummer who, like the author, is named Camden Joy) on solo and group adventures amid the vacuous American landscape, of diners, clubs, colleges, and hotels. Boy Island is at once a eulogy for the formerly limitless possibilities of the American road and, ultimately, a meditation on the redemptive power of music and friendship.

Genres: Music

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Camden Joy is one of my favorite contemporary authors, because one, he really messes up my head. Here's a 'novel' about the band Camper van Beethoven, and one of the characters in the book is the drummer 'Camden Joy.' So he uses real characters in a fictional setting. I think...

Nevertheless this is a great book about band life just as the first Gulf War was taking place. I really like how Joy uses 'rock n' roll' life in his literature.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book I checked out from the Cypress Public Library New Books Shelf in 2000 and never read or... the greatest such book? (I haven't watched The Colbert Report in many months so that joke is really pretty sad.)

I keep putting books up here that make Amanda cringe and I don't see any reason to stop. I do love Camper van Beethoven, and Virginia, and Jay Farrar playing pinball, and novels with ensemble casts and awkward shifts in tone in the last 10 pages of books, so rounds of applause for each of these.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is, when it all comes down to it, a great story being told before here, of a time just before grunge took over the musical landscape, and of how bands got by on the road before that. The lack of a solid narrative perspective in all but the last chapter of the book, however, is a total distraction from that story. A quick, entertaining read, but I feel as if a few more editorial passes through it could have improved things greatly.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

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