Status Updates From Old Newgate Road

Read brilliantly by Ari Fliakos

I love going into my local Coles. You know when you're so familiar with a store's stock that when something new is added to the shelves that even as you're passing by it will catch your peripheral vision and make you wonder if you've checked it out before. Even better when it's an author/title unknown to you - which is rare these days thanks to Goodreads. Ivy Pochoda's blurb on the inside sold me immediately!!

He brings Daniel out to get him away from Portland, and pulls a local string or two in order to get him on a tobacco crew. Daniel is sharp. He bonds with Phil, who is lucid sometimes and at others, totally out of it; before D. arrives he pisses himself, then showers with his pajamas still on. Daniel confronts Cole, telling him that his refusal to deal with conflict isn't going to fix their family. Quotes.

I fucking love this book! Goes to show: never put too much stake in the reviews others have left. So now we know that his father killed his mother, and Cole was the one to find them after it happened. The abuse was never spoken of during the day, a family secret, but now she's dead. His new life is in Oregon, but he didn't think seeing the old house would be so hard...or that his dad would be in it and unhinged.

This guy's writing could wake the dead. The slow, dreadful build up to the horror that took place when he was a kid in 7th grade...and we're hardly even started yet. The developmental aspects are dead on.
Nostalgic references may have a noir quality to younger and middling readers, but for the Boomer generation, it's like it was yesterday.

Cole is flying from his Oregon home to Connecticut, where he was raised, to purchase some rare American Chestnut boards for the addition he plans to put on his house. It's his old hometown, and he is bracing himself for the drive past his old house. We wonder what happened there.
Literary quality--is this why the bad reviews? Seems like a capable writer.