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Make It Stop
A speculative tale of dysfunctional vigilantes, sex-crazed junkies, and corporate healthcare run amok from best-selling chronicler of LA punk Jim Ruland. Scores of detox and rehab centers across Southern California have adopted a controversial new conditional release policy that forces patients to stay until they pay their bills. And if they can’t pay? They don’t leave.
Make It Stop, a group of highly skilled recovering addicts dedicated to rescuing those trapped in these prison hospitals by posing as patients and getting them out by any means necessary. But when Scary Gary, one of their top ops, gets killed on assignment, Melanie Marsh and her crew set out to avenge his death and unravel an unthinkable medical conspiracy that threatens to destroy the organization and cripple the city with a dangerous new drug. Melanie may be LA’s best hope but if, and only if, she can stay sober.
From decrepit rehab wards to beachside punk clubs, Make It Stop takes readers into LA’s darkest corners, exploring sobriety, sanity, and a society hell-bent on profiting off those who need its help the most.
Make It Stop, a group of highly skilled recovering addicts dedicated to rescuing those trapped in these prison hospitals by posing as patients and getting them out by any means necessary. But when Scary Gary, one of their top ops, gets killed on assignment, Melanie Marsh and her crew set out to avenge his death and unravel an unthinkable medical conspiracy that threatens to destroy the organization and cripple the city with a dangerous new drug. Melanie may be LA’s best hope but if, and only if, she can stay sober.
From decrepit rehab wards to beachside punk clubs, Make It Stop takes readers into LA’s darkest corners, exploring sobriety, sanity, and a society hell-bent on profiting off those who need its help the most.
256 pages, Paperback
Published April 25, 2023
13 people are currently reading
293 people want to read
About the author
Jim Ruland
23 books347 followersJim Ruland is the LA Times bestselling author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records. He also co-authored My Damage with Keith Morris, the founding vocalist of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and OFF! and Do What You Want with Bad Religion. He wrote the award-winning novel Forest of Fortune and the short story collection Big Lonesome. His new novel, Make It Stop, will be published by Rare Bird Books.
His work has appeared in The Believer, Electric Literature, Esquire, Hobart, Granta, Los Angeles Times, and Razorcake -- America's only non-profit punk rock zine. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the host of Vermin on the Mount, an irreverent reading series based in Southern California.
Subscribe to his newsletter Message from the Underworld: http://jimruland.substack.com
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 29, 2023
The premise of this book was really interesting to me—that in the near future there is a thing called conditional release which means that when you go to substance abuse treatment you have to stay there until your bill is paid in full. There is a group called Make It Stop that rescues the people trapped in treatment. Throw in a superdrug called Bliss and the story gets good. I don’t feel like I’m describing it very well but I enjoyed the book.
August 30, 2023
Ruland pens this half-assed hard-boiled dystopian Nellie Bly redux like an amiably chatty barfly, but certainly seems to know the terrain of substance abuse, recovery programs, and dating apps.
July 26, 2023
I picked this book up in the airport because it sounded like an interesting premise. It kind of felt like the author was writing the book as a movie, especially towards the last 30-45 pages. Not a bad thing, but it made the last bit go by extremely fast which was different from the rest of the pacing in the book. Overall enjoyed it and would recommend.
April 29, 2023
I picked up this book from Skylight Books because, straight off the bat, the blurb was really, really good. I also couldn't help but support local authors and local retailers. From what I know, this is Jim Ruland's first fiction novel, and I applaud their hard work and persistence. Discussing topic matter such as conditional release in hospitals, although fictional, is very much rooted in reality and a commentary about our American healthcare system that is much needed. Now onto my thoughts. I personally didn't like the writing, particularly at the beginning of the novel. Ruland's use of slang/metaphors within their descriptions often felt forced. It seemed he was trying to be overly detailed in an effort to add nuance and flair to their characters, but most of the time, it fell flat. The book started to get good with more "action-packed scenes," such as the battles between Kim, Melanie, and Hansen and when Melanie went to Evergreen's detention. These sequences felt raw and left me on the edge of my seat. Furthermore, the ending was also not my favorite. The whole scene of Melanie ramming Applewhite into a pillar with her car felt like an abrupt ending to a battle that could have been more narratively satisfying if resolved more slowly and with care. The ending dialogue also attempts to add a sense of "this is just a small piece of the puzzle," opening the narrative to a sequel of sorts, but overall this addition felt out of place and cliche: a sort of "until next time!" Another thing that I must note is I felt the plot relied a lot on convenience. Kim's whole existence and the fact she conveniently knew the entire layout of the facility and mentions it right when they are about to break in just a few pages later felt rushedly put together. Overall I see a lot of potential in Ruland's writing and hope my criticisms come across as constructive. If you're reading this, Jim, I hope to read more of your works in the future! (Also, one last thing. I think I found a typo on page 254. It should be "Melanie races around the stack...."
June 4, 2024
Rounding up to 4.5 stars! Nothing was really wrong with this other than I was expecting a bit more to deal with the healthcare crisis and really what would happen if indeed the healthcare business, and it is nothing but a business, actually did hold patients until they paid their bills and a little less sci-fiesque spin that the novel took. There were times I felt like the novel lost its focus and turned more into a sci -fi romp, complete with zombie like characters and characters having holograms. Literally.
I thought the story was good, but it was not stupendous by any means. I was interested in the characters, and I liked the fast moving narrative of the novel.
If you are looking for a novel that touches on drug addiction, you may find it here, but you as well may find it overshadowed by the mad scientist trope.
Final verdict—I recommend for an escape read, but know what you think it is about and what you get, will feel like it goes off the rails a bit just over the halfway mark. 📚📚📚
I thought the story was good, but it was not stupendous by any means. I was interested in the characters, and I liked the fast moving narrative of the novel.
If you are looking for a novel that touches on drug addiction, you may find it here, but you as well may find it overshadowed by the mad scientist trope.
Final verdict—I recommend for an escape read, but know what you think it is about and what you get, will feel like it goes off the rails a bit just over the halfway mark. 📚📚📚
November 19, 2024
Podcast interview: Soon!
We have many great writers in San Diego, perhaps one of the most respected is Jim Ruland. While he has made a name for himself writing books about punk rock, co-authoring Damaged the autobiography of Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris, telling the story of Bad Religion, and writing Corporate Rock Sucks THE BOOK on SST Records the pioneering punk record label. In town, we know Jim from his classic reading series Vermin on the Mount, which gathered authors, poets, and performance artists. Jim is visible at book events around town, where he often writes culture articles for the LA Times.
I had his novel on my shelf for a while and needed to read it. I knew it had a slight speculative edge, reminding me of some high-powered things. The comp I came up with was a manic political thriller that crosses vibes somewhere between Fight Club and Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.
There are a couple of reasons why I read this now. It was an episode of a NY Times podcast that was talking about rehab and psych wards that were trapping people and not letting them go. I thought as I was listening, hey that is the topic of Jim’s book. I bumped up my list, and then I saw Jim at the Verbatim Book Fair. I decided that it would be my read for the flight to Portland for Bizarro con. I started it on the bus to the airport and finished before I even got to brunch in Portland. It was a great almost one-sitting read.
Make It Stop is a strange novel that doesn’t fit tidy into any specific genre. It is a political thriller, mildly a crime novel, and mainly a speculative fiction novel, but it could be called many things. I suspect the publisher is less comfortable with the SF label than Jim is. That said it is a near-future political thriller…you know Science Fiction.
Melanie is our main point-of-view character, a former drug addict who found herself in rehab and couldn’t get released due to laws that state you can be held as long as you still owe money for your care, and of course each day the cost racks up. This kind of healthcare trap is the kinda thing you think can’t happen but it does. The reason Melanie is in rehab however is as a member of Make It Stop a clandestine underground group, breaking people out of these healthcare prisons. The legal term ‘Indefinite forfeiture of liberty.’ In other words some capitalist bastardization of things that should be a right.
In one of the early chapters, Ruland has a character that highlights the struggle. “It's been three years, nine months, and twenty-four days since he chewed up Three hundred milligrams of oxycontin, chased it with a pint of rum, and waited to die. Trevor woke up in a hospital and restraints, hooked up to all kinds of tubes. For three days the lights burned through his eyelids while the voices of his deceased father and missing mother drifted through his bed and truly wished he was dead.
When he got out of the hospital, he was Seventy-three thousand dollars in debt and remanded to court-ordered rehab, where he started plotting his next attempt. There he met Doyle who enlisted him in his organization. Trevor wasn't a smash-the-state type like many of the others who were drawn to make it stop and groups like it there seemed to be more of them every week.”
The idea that people can be trapped in these healthcare networks that become debtors' prisons in every sense is a nightmare. Through carefully crafted backstories and dialogue Ruland has created a thought-provoking piece of entertainment. The characters are rich and fully realized, and the story is fun and interesting while communicating the message. It is also just a fun ride seeing the Robin Hood activists fight the system.
Still, you might be wondering why I call it SF when it is so clearly ripped from the headlines. There is a technology like TruLuv dating apps (again still not that futuristic), and there are different cars and phones that gave way to TABS (tablets). Doyle, one of the leaders of Make it Stop introduces us to the key speculative element when he goes to a morgue to identify a dead member of their team. He is struck.
A new drug on the street…” Sorry, Sally says. “Should have warned you about that these Kannibals have an intense odor.”
“Kannibals?” He fumbles in his pocket for a cough drop and pops it into his mouth. An old trick a cop taught him.
“Kannabliss users. Sally offers him a paper mask that Doyle waves off. Though most of the time they just call it bliss. Nasty stuff.”
I love a good fictional drug, and the new drug on the street simulates the euphoria of climax during sex, thus becoming popular quickly. The deadly side effects are a risk, but as addictive as it is makes it a money maker for Hansen the mustache-twirling CEO of Health Safety Net. The fictional drug and this wicked CEO keep a train of people coming into their hospitals. There is something that people always say about James Cameron’s Aliens. Capitalism is the real villain. Capitalism mixed with a uniquely American clusterfuck of a broken healthcare system is the villain in Make it Stop. It would be impossible to make a human character an avatar for that mess and not have them come off as less reasonable than Cobra Commander before his morning coffee.
Make it Stop is an angry novel that at times has the energy of a punk rock song, but it is written carefully by a great storyteller. Ruland went through many drafts, including longer versions but you don’t feel the ghosts of the phantom limb chapters ever. There are hardly any wasted words. It is not a super long novel, but it fits in as much message, character study, and weird fun as a much longer would struggle with. Make it Stop is a great reading experience and is recommended.
We have many great writers in San Diego, perhaps one of the most respected is Jim Ruland. While he has made a name for himself writing books about punk rock, co-authoring Damaged the autobiography of Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris, telling the story of Bad Religion, and writing Corporate Rock Sucks THE BOOK on SST Records the pioneering punk record label. In town, we know Jim from his classic reading series Vermin on the Mount, which gathered authors, poets, and performance artists. Jim is visible at book events around town, where he often writes culture articles for the LA Times.
I had his novel on my shelf for a while and needed to read it. I knew it had a slight speculative edge, reminding me of some high-powered things. The comp I came up with was a manic political thriller that crosses vibes somewhere between Fight Club and Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.
There are a couple of reasons why I read this now. It was an episode of a NY Times podcast that was talking about rehab and psych wards that were trapping people and not letting them go. I thought as I was listening, hey that is the topic of Jim’s book. I bumped up my list, and then I saw Jim at the Verbatim Book Fair. I decided that it would be my read for the flight to Portland for Bizarro con. I started it on the bus to the airport and finished before I even got to brunch in Portland. It was a great almost one-sitting read.
Make It Stop is a strange novel that doesn’t fit tidy into any specific genre. It is a political thriller, mildly a crime novel, and mainly a speculative fiction novel, but it could be called many things. I suspect the publisher is less comfortable with the SF label than Jim is. That said it is a near-future political thriller…you know Science Fiction.
Melanie is our main point-of-view character, a former drug addict who found herself in rehab and couldn’t get released due to laws that state you can be held as long as you still owe money for your care, and of course each day the cost racks up. This kind of healthcare trap is the kinda thing you think can’t happen but it does. The reason Melanie is in rehab however is as a member of Make It Stop a clandestine underground group, breaking people out of these healthcare prisons. The legal term ‘Indefinite forfeiture of liberty.’ In other words some capitalist bastardization of things that should be a right.
In one of the early chapters, Ruland has a character that highlights the struggle. “It's been three years, nine months, and twenty-four days since he chewed up Three hundred milligrams of oxycontin, chased it with a pint of rum, and waited to die. Trevor woke up in a hospital and restraints, hooked up to all kinds of tubes. For three days the lights burned through his eyelids while the voices of his deceased father and missing mother drifted through his bed and truly wished he was dead.
When he got out of the hospital, he was Seventy-three thousand dollars in debt and remanded to court-ordered rehab, where he started plotting his next attempt. There he met Doyle who enlisted him in his organization. Trevor wasn't a smash-the-state type like many of the others who were drawn to make it stop and groups like it there seemed to be more of them every week.”
The idea that people can be trapped in these healthcare networks that become debtors' prisons in every sense is a nightmare. Through carefully crafted backstories and dialogue Ruland has created a thought-provoking piece of entertainment. The characters are rich and fully realized, and the story is fun and interesting while communicating the message. It is also just a fun ride seeing the Robin Hood activists fight the system.
Still, you might be wondering why I call it SF when it is so clearly ripped from the headlines. There is a technology like TruLuv dating apps (again still not that futuristic), and there are different cars and phones that gave way to TABS (tablets). Doyle, one of the leaders of Make it Stop introduces us to the key speculative element when he goes to a morgue to identify a dead member of their team. He is struck.
A new drug on the street…” Sorry, Sally says. “Should have warned you about that these Kannibals have an intense odor.”
“Kannibals?” He fumbles in his pocket for a cough drop and pops it into his mouth. An old trick a cop taught him.
“Kannabliss users. Sally offers him a paper mask that Doyle waves off. Though most of the time they just call it bliss. Nasty stuff.”
I love a good fictional drug, and the new drug on the street simulates the euphoria of climax during sex, thus becoming popular quickly. The deadly side effects are a risk, but as addictive as it is makes it a money maker for Hansen the mustache-twirling CEO of Health Safety Net. The fictional drug and this wicked CEO keep a train of people coming into their hospitals. There is something that people always say about James Cameron’s Aliens. Capitalism is the real villain. Capitalism mixed with a uniquely American clusterfuck of a broken healthcare system is the villain in Make it Stop. It would be impossible to make a human character an avatar for that mess and not have them come off as less reasonable than Cobra Commander before his morning coffee.
Make it Stop is an angry novel that at times has the energy of a punk rock song, but it is written carefully by a great storyteller. Ruland went through many drafts, including longer versions but you don’t feel the ghosts of the phantom limb chapters ever. There are hardly any wasted words. It is not a super long novel, but it fits in as much message, character study, and weird fun as a much longer would struggle with. Make it Stop is a great reading experience and is recommended.
April 26, 2023
Jacked up on a combo of street drugs and jalapeño vodka, this novel packs even more punk rock vitality than Ruland’s definitive books on Keith Morris, Bad Religion, and SST Records. All the ragtag vigilantes are fun to follow, but Melanie Marsh is who you're rooting for here. Building herself up and burning it all down. Bring on the sequel.
January 29, 2025
Jim Ruland is a real one. Very few can get me to read a dystopian novel, especially these days, but this book has heart and just enough faith in (some) humanity to help me stomach the grizzly nature of a world not too far off from our own. He also nails all of the feelings that come with being part of an underground music scene. Looking forward to whatever he cooks up next.
February 25, 2025
A good, quick read. A little dystopian, a little punk rock with a smattering of evil corporate elites getting their comeuppance. I enjoyed this thoroughly.
May 24, 2023
You don't need to be a recovering addict or a 12-stepper or have toiled in the world of for-profit treatment centers to enjoy the hell out of Make It Stop, but it sure doesn't hurt. Jim Ruland has some experience around the edges of that scene and it very much shows. But as long as you're a fan of street-level neo-noir, cyberpunk (with more punk than cyber) speculative fiction, and five-minutes-into-the-future sci-fi with pulp grit and a bit of social conscience, you'll definitely dig this book.
Make It Stop tells the all-too-plausible story of a recognizably dystopian Lost Angeles where the vagaries of insurance claims have rendered private hospitals and treatment centers into borderline debtors' prisons, where the perpetually "recovering" addicts who can't pay are held hostage in less-than-desirable conditions until someone on the outside can come up with the cash. It's sort of the nightmarish opposite of what actually happens in the real world, where running up against the end of your claim can have you out on the street in a heartbeat, but in Ruland's vision the end result is equally, if not more, dire.
That's where the good folks at Make It Stop come in. Ex-addicts themselves, with the burning desire to help others in the way that others helped them, they're an underground resistance movement-cum-private mercenary service, for-hire vigilantes who'll help rescue the hostages of the ugly system by any means necessary, including blunt brute force.
Without giving too much away, Make It Stop is reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite works of spec fiction, Philip K. Dick's terrific A Scanner Darkly, another work where the lines between who's helping who and who's ultimately behind the self-perpetuating cycle of addiction/recovery/relapse/rescue are as blurry as the vision of those caught up in it.
There's definitely an entire sub-genre of "addiction science fiction" which makes more than a lot of sense, considering the heavy overlap between high concept storytellers and the mental fuel that often keeps the mindfires blazing, into which Ruland's book slides perfectly, somewhere between Dick's paranoiac detective story and Bucky Sinister's dark-as-pitch time-mind-and-soul-bending Black Hole (which, if you haven't read it, I fucking dare you).
Ruland's book, while full of rough-edged, damaged people who make gray-area decisions and endure dark moments, is ultimately kinder and gentler than Dick's or Sinister's tales of hyper-dysfunction. He clearly loves his characters, even his brilliantly sinister villain, and the ones he cares for most get a lot of genuine grace notes, and a hint that their adventures may well continue in the hauntingly near-future...
Make It Stop tells the all-too-plausible story of a recognizably dystopian Lost Angeles where the vagaries of insurance claims have rendered private hospitals and treatment centers into borderline debtors' prisons, where the perpetually "recovering" addicts who can't pay are held hostage in less-than-desirable conditions until someone on the outside can come up with the cash. It's sort of the nightmarish opposite of what actually happens in the real world, where running up against the end of your claim can have you out on the street in a heartbeat, but in Ruland's vision the end result is equally, if not more, dire.
That's where the good folks at Make It Stop come in. Ex-addicts themselves, with the burning desire to help others in the way that others helped them, they're an underground resistance movement-cum-private mercenary service, for-hire vigilantes who'll help rescue the hostages of the ugly system by any means necessary, including blunt brute force.
Without giving too much away, Make It Stop is reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite works of spec fiction, Philip K. Dick's terrific A Scanner Darkly, another work where the lines between who's helping who and who's ultimately behind the self-perpetuating cycle of addiction/recovery/relapse/rescue are as blurry as the vision of those caught up in it.
There's definitely an entire sub-genre of "addiction science fiction" which makes more than a lot of sense, considering the heavy overlap between high concept storytellers and the mental fuel that often keeps the mindfires blazing, into which Ruland's book slides perfectly, somewhere between Dick's paranoiac detective story and Bucky Sinister's dark-as-pitch time-mind-and-soul-bending Black Hole (which, if you haven't read it, I fucking dare you).
Ruland's book, while full of rough-edged, damaged people who make gray-area decisions and endure dark moments, is ultimately kinder and gentler than Dick's or Sinister's tales of hyper-dysfunction. He clearly loves his characters, even his brilliantly sinister villain, and the ones he cares for most get a lot of genuine grace notes, and a hint that their adventures may well continue in the hauntingly near-future...
May 19, 2023
Make It Stop by Jim Ruland was a novel so good it pained me when life got in the way and I would have to put it down. The good thing about a book like this, though, is it gave me something to look forward to- those moments when I could put life on hold and lost myself in Ruland’s fast moving plot and well fleshed out characters. The action and forward motion of the plot of Make It Stop almost made it read like a graphic novel or a movie script. And although it’s a work of speculative fiction set in the near future, the reality of the story is eerie, making me think we’re not far off from the fictional story that Ruland created. I won’t give a synopsis of Make It Stop as there are far more qualified people that have already done that but what I will say is that this is one of the best books I’ve read all year (and I’ve read a ton of them) and is one of those novels that I’ll be buying for reader-friends at Christmas as it’s so good I desperately want someone to share it with.
July 19, 2023
I really cared for the primary character here, Melanie, a substance-abusing woman struggling to stay sober who’s also helping others. Those others are addicts who’ve entered into rehab centers that detain those patients who can’t pay for their treatment. The person running these rehab centers has developed a new drug designed to develop a whole new crop of addicts. The drug, called Bliss, sounds kind of like a combination of ecstasy and crack cocaine.
There’s all sorts of side stories that work with the main plot in this dystopian tale set in the near future. I don’t think this book will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I finished it in a day and I see that it’s rated pretty high on Goodreads.
There’s all sorts of side stories that work with the main plot in this dystopian tale set in the near future. I don’t think this book will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I finished it in a day and I see that it’s rated pretty high on Goodreads.
November 7, 2023
I could not put it down. Its setting is the near-future, but it could really start happening tomorrow the way for-profit healthcare is going. Make It Stop are a vigilante group, busting those out of rehab who have been detained under ‘conditional release’, i.e. until they can pay their bill. The story is gripping, full of action and subterfuge, and in this way it reminded me of a James Bond novel. But also funny too. I laughed out loud at the mention of a ‘hate crime against a corporation’. And there’s a double Buzzcocks reference in one section that had me stop reading to message Jim how impressed I was with that. My favourite part though is the description of Evil Dave’s Black Sundae, which would be at home in any of Pynchon’s California novels.
November 21, 2023
In the world of this novel, hospitals have become an active part of the prison industrial complex, keeping people who can’t pay their medical bills locked up and using them as guinea pigs to test new drugs.
A vigilante group pops up to free the imprisoned — though this organization of recovering addicts has problems of its own. The resulting story ends up taking you all over Southern California, from punk shows to slums to massage parlors.
A vigilante group pops up to free the imprisoned — though this organization of recovering addicts has problems of its own. The resulting story ends up taking you all over Southern California, from punk shows to slums to massage parlors.
September 7, 2023
My favorite genre of novel is “dystopian future,” the more plausible the better. Make It Stop fits the bill perfectly. Written with pace a precision, it’s both a thought experiment and a page-turner. Banged through in a week and I’m left wanting more! Ruland’s venture into fiction is more than promising.
May 27, 2023
In this searing page-turner, Ruland takes us into a hellish future where human dignity is subjugated to healthcare profits—sound familiar? It's the not-too-distant future...Equal parts societal commentary and indulgent action flick, Make It Stop is a hell of a book with a hell of an ending.
December 10, 2023
Wow, finally had time to finish yet another book in my stack of books that are begging to be read. I relate to so much of this book. I work in a rehab. With the way insurance companies dictate the cost and care... Ruland's dystopian version may soon be reality. This book kicks ass--read it!
February 12, 2025
I loved this book. The best part was the characters. They were all flawed people and yet deeply principled. The dystopian aspects of the book were also something not out of the realm of possibility with a profit driven Healthcare system like America's.
May 19, 2023
3.5 ⭐️
May 20, 2023
A fun caper and a surprisingly hard look at sobriety.
August 29, 2023
Interesting premise but too much content for me. Trigger warning for people who used to be users or who have struggled with alcoholism (which I do not)
November 28, 2023
I think this book had great potential but poor execution. Sometimes you can just tell when a book is written by a man.
October 30, 2023
Wow!
As a Jim Ruland fan since Big Lonesome, I didn’t know what to expect from his foray into a slightly futuristic thriller, yet I couldn’t get enough from Make It Stop. Plotted brilliantly, with indelible and unforgettable characters—including a villain whose breed I’ve never encountered—Make it Stop rushes you toward its crisis while slowing you down with sentences that beg to be underlined for their beauty and insights into LA (especially its punk scene) that elevate Ruland into the pantheon of Paul Beatty, Raymond Chandler, and Joan Didion. As well, I’ve read little that treats sobriety and recovery better. I’m probably not the most objective of critics, having known Jim for years, but I can say that few books in the last years have landed with the same blast as Make it Stop. Indeed, it’s a knockout.
As a Jim Ruland fan since Big Lonesome, I didn’t know what to expect from his foray into a slightly futuristic thriller, yet I couldn’t get enough from Make It Stop. Plotted brilliantly, with indelible and unforgettable characters—including a villain whose breed I’ve never encountered—Make it Stop rushes you toward its crisis while slowing you down with sentences that beg to be underlined for their beauty and insights into LA (especially its punk scene) that elevate Ruland into the pantheon of Paul Beatty, Raymond Chandler, and Joan Didion. As well, I’ve read little that treats sobriety and recovery better. I’m probably not the most objective of critics, having known Jim for years, but I can say that few books in the last years have landed with the same blast as Make it Stop. Indeed, it’s a knockout.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews