How Are You Going To Save Yourself
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'A powerful rendering of contemporary masculinity in America.' TLS
'A blistering debut . . . Hilarious and compelling, Holmes offers up a mirror to contemporary society . . . a compassionate and powerful exploration of how race, friendship and sex intersect and the real-world consequences of stereotypes.' - Independent
Both humorous and heart-breaking, How Are You Going To Save Yourself is a timely debut about sex, race, family and friendship for fans of Junot Diaz and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
It explores the lives of four friends from the city of Pawtucket: Rydell, Lazarus, Rakim, and Giovanni, or more affectionately Rye, Dub, Rolls, and G.
Once bound together by location and shared experience, their bonds fade and change as their adult lives begin to take different shapes. They are confronted with society's expectations of them, family pressures, and ultimately the way they see themselves - sometimes conforming, sometimes challenging the stereotypes. Ultimately they are trying not to fail themselves and the people they love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Holmes's crackling debut of interconnected stories, Dubs, Rolls, Rye, and Gio are four young black men growing up in Rhode Island. The main character is Gio, born to a one-time pro footballer father and an Italian mother, who is also the one who "makes it," leaving for college at Cornell and befriending the kind of moneyed youth who "live like some fucking rappers," in Dub's words. Stand-outs include the first story, "What's Wrong with You? What's Wrong with Me?," in which a seemingly jocular question from Dub about how many white women they have all slept with leads to the confrontation of some uncomfortable truths for Rolls, and "Toll for the Passengers," in which Gio is forced to make some difficult decisions when an RV full of drunk college students hits a car on his street and his cousin Isaac escalates the situation. For all his excellence, however, Holmes does not write female characters with the same nuance he affords his male characters, and readers will wish that characters like Gio's little sister, Whit who is excellent in "Outside Tacoma" or Tayla, the high school girl Rolls meets in "Be Good to Me," were given more page space. Nevertheless, Holmes proves his ability to navigate vulnerability, as well as his fearlessness in tackling tense situations head-on, all of which combines for a collection of superb stories.
