Falling Out of Cars

Sometimes, the unfocused, decentered, media-saturated Britain of this book makes it feel like an American story, echoing On the Road and Easy Rider, among other sources: characters with murky and often violent pasts roam an unfamiliar and transformed landscape in search of a self-realization that will inevitably elude their grasp. The future is occluded; for many of the characters, the very concept of the future has lost its meaning. Whatever made the past meaningful or beautiful is lost-Marlene's daughter died in the earliest days of the virus-and irretrievable. This futility and melancholy suffuse the text. Readers looking for excitement, adventure, and the promise of the open road will instead find deflation and despair; readers sensitive to these will find Falling Out of Cars a compelling read.