itibaren Karavaevo, Smolenskaya oblast', Rusia, 215226 itibaren Karavaevo, Smolenskaya oblast', Rusia, 215226

This book reminds me of the letters a family friend used to send: every Christmas, Uncle Harry would regale us with his teenaged daughter's latest pregnancy, his son's pot bust, how the Eugene schools were falling apart despite Harry's best efforts, how his sister was sliding into Alzheimer's, etc., etc. Vlautin executes this roadtrip to nowhere deftly enough; the main tone is Bukowskian without being slavishly so, and Frank's narratives within the story have a Brautiganesque feel. In theory, this should be traveling the same territory as two of my favorites, Jim Jarmusch and Daniel Woodrell, but there is a flatness here that is not actually present in the works of Jarmusch and Woodrell.