DODGERS.

DODGERS by BILL BEVERLEY.

When East, a low-level lookout for a Los Angeles drug organisation, loses his watch house in a police raid, his boss recruits him for a very different job: a road trip - straight down the middle of white, rural America - to assassinate a judge in Wisconsin.

Having no choice, East and a crew of untested boys - including his trigger-happy younger brother, Ty - leave the only home they've ever known in a nondescript blue van, with a roll of cash, a map and a gun they shouldn't have. Along the way, the country surprises East. The blood on his hands isn't the blood he expects. And he reaches places where only he can decide which way to go - or which person to become.

- Back Cover Blurb

The Boxes was all the boys knew; it was the only place.

- First Sentence; Chapter 1

  The lights he switched on there were furious, bright, paint-store white: yes. They threw a glare that filled the yard, counted the trees. East flinched at it.

Were they covered? Deep enough? The last-second dilemma of hide-and-seek: could you find a better place? Or did moving expose you now?

Slowly the man stepped back out of the kitchen, into one of the sides of the house, soundless - like watching TV with the mute on.

- Memorable Moment; Page 188

SOURCE ... A reading group read.

READ FOR A CHALLENGE? ... No.

MY THOUGHTS ... Oddly enough it isn't the books that most of us have enjoyed that are the most talked about. Nor is it those books that some of us liked and some of us, well, didn't. The most talked about books at the reading group I attend tend to be those books that none of us liked and so on this basis it could be a lively discussion.*

Search for Dodger on amazon.co.uk and you'll find the synopsis hidden away amongst a list of awards it has won/been shortlisted for and accolades by the likes of the Guardian and Irish Times newspapers - indeed the inner front cover of the book along with the first five pages are given over to critical acclaim after critical acclaim. Now call me cynical BUT just who are they trying to convince? Surely I can't be the only one who gets slightly suspicious when recommendations are given priority over telling us what the book is actually about.

Setting aside that there was nothing about Dodgers that I related to; not the characters themselves, not the language they used (and by this I don't so much mean 'bad' language as their everyday language) and certainly not the situations they found themselves in, that what I felt unbelievable and not authentic may well have been so there was still nothing about it that engaged me.

A novel that drags (the fact that I found myself checking the page number an inordinate number of times wondering just when something was actually going to happen testament to this) only to peak too early in an ending that is left disappointingly open. 

I get that its a (sad and depressing) reflection of the economical/cultural US (or at least as in as far as the author seemingly sees it) ... alas for some reason I just wasn't feeling it. Though doubtlessly in part this was due to the fact that for such a character driven novel I didn't think the likes of East (a character that came to us so fully developed that growth wasn't an option) and Ty strong enough to compensate for what I felt to be a weak plot. 

* UPDATE ... Unfortunately along with several of my fellow readers I wasn't able to attend yesterday's get together but I'm reliably informed that the general consensus of those who actually managed to finish the book was that it wasn't one of our better reads.