December 19, 2016
Hoffman’s excellent third novel (after Be Safe I Love You) follows acclaimed poet and professor Milo Rollock as he reminisces about his unscrupulous youth in Greece and the people who still haunt him. After leaving his working-class neighborhood to try and make a living as a boxer, Milo falls for Eton dropout Jasper Lethe. The two survive in Athens in the 1980s by working the local trains, goading tourists into staying in disreputable hotels. Nomadic Bridey Sullivan, an American teenager who was raised in the woods by her survivalist uncle, becomes their friend and lover. In the present, as a middle-aged man teaching creative writing in New York City, Milo sees himself in his talented student Tiffany Navas, but he is otherwise dismayed by his bourgeois existence. He moved to the U.S. in an attempt to reconnect with Bridey, who was pregnant when he last saw her. Jasper’s sociopathic and destructive tendencies long ago, including the fallout of a scam he masterminded that destroyed the reputation of a friend of Bridey’s, long ago sealed Jasper’s fate. Hoffman beautifully conveys the depths of Milo’s longing as well the personalities of his motley crew.
December 15, 2016
Three scrappy outsiders--inextricably bonded less by circumstance than by love--struggle to survive in the sweat-drenched underbelly of Athens' red light district in the late 1980s. "We were looking for nothing and had found it in Athens," explains Bridey Sullivan in the opening pages of Hoffman's (Be Safe I Love You, 2014, etc.) third novel. She is 17, smart and wild and self-contained, feral, a survivor. She has come to Athens to escape the bizarre trauma of her childhood, raised by a kindly doomsday-planning uncle, a smoke jumper, in the far reaches of Washington state. When she meets Jasper, a British expat, an Eton dropout, on a train, she is immediately taken in by his beauty; his is "the kind of elegant placid face you saw in old portraits." Jasper's boyfriend is Milo, another Brit, a teenage boxer from Manchester. They scrape by as runners--hustlers who trawl trains for tourists to entice back to dumpy hotels in exchange for their own rooms and board; in love with each other, they form a kind of family, drunken and desperate but free, tied to nothing, loyal only to their own. But their grimy, sweaty sort of equilibrium cannot last, of course, and when one of their money-making schemes links them to a deadly act of terrorism, the trio is forced apart. The novel, sticky with the stultifying heat of Athens, oozes backward and forward in time and place: gritty 1980s Athens, Bridey's troubled childhood in Washington, and contemporary New York City, where Milo, now a successful poet, is in residence at the New School, drowning his sorrows in a never-ending stream of Four Loko. Crisp and immediate, the New York segments are a welcome contrast to the action in Greece, which is so beautiful and atmospheric that it sometimes feels as though it's happening behind a screen. A haunting novel, original and deeply sad.
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Starred review from December 1, 2016
Hoffman (Be Safe I Love You, 2014) centers her newest novel on a young American woman, Bridey, who's living in Athens in the 1980s and working as a runner, convincing unsuspecting tourists to stay in a dingy hotel for a cut of the deal. The work is dirty, dangerous, and most times drunken, and Bridey immediately falls in with fellow runners Milo and Jasper, an English couple who welcome her into their life and bed. A moneymaking prank soon goes awry, causing a detonation that disperses the three. Chapters alternate from Bridey's first-person narration of that time to Milo's present-day perspective. After winning a scholarship, then a prestigious award, for his poetry, Milo has accepted a teaching job at the New School. Only he can't stand the work his privileged, selfie-generation students produce; none of his constant Google searches for Bridey turn up anything; and he's not totally sure what he's aiming to do by befriending a bright female student. In leaving apparent holes or unanswered questions in her layered story, Hoffman is fearless and trusting of her readers, and her precise prose captures the novel's many settingsGreece, Washington State, New York Cityand her characters' feelings and actions, vividly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
September 15, 2016
Hoffman grabbed awed reviews with her debut novel, 2011's So Much Pretty; Be Safe I Love You followed suit. Here, Bridey Sullivan leaves behind a difficult upbringing in Washington State for sun-baked Athens, where she steers tourists toward accommodations for a small commission and forms a sort-of family with a queer British couple. Raw stuff; hopefully Hoffman's breakout.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2017
Acclaimed journalist and novelist Hoffman (Be Safe I Love You; So Much Pretty) perfectly depicts two very different lives in her new novel. It simultaneously follows young Bridey Sullivan, who lives like a vagabond in 1980s Athens, Greece, and her friend Milo, a poet and New School professor in present-day Manhattan. Bridey met Milo and his boyfriend, former English prep school student Jasper, while looking for an easy way to make money in Athens. The three of them lived together on the top floor of a hotel, paid to scam tourists into staying there. The poetic way Hoffman describes their drunkenness and squalor and their complex relationship is one of the main draws of the novel. Then Milo tries to go straight, although he's unable to relate to his peers and is constantly seeking news of Bridey or trying to fill the hole she left in his life years earlier. VERDICT This fascinating mix of youth, violence, and romantic and familial relations, loaded with socioeconomic issues, makes for a beautiful read. Recommended for readers of travel literature, coming-of-age fiction, and LGBTQ stories. [See Prepub Alert, 8/22/16.]--Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.