The Assault on Tony's

Rating:
Summary: No candy coating here
Review: A novel that speaks to the darkest parts of oneself. Rambling and lost at times, a true voice emerges from the chaos. O'Brien has been here, he knows his way around all that flawed and desperate humanity and he shines a flashlight directly into it's decaying face, watches the insects scurry from the light. It's too late to take it back; he has shown us. I am grateful.

If there is a Tony's in heaven, we can bet where John O'Brien would be: In the half-light of the corner booth, glass full to the brim, chuckling to himself about some melancholy truth.

Rating:
Summary: Great Premise... So-So Characters
Review: As in his first, and more well-known novel, Leaving Las Vegas, O'Brien plumbs the depths of alcoholism in this vision of societal meltdown. Inspired by the 1992 riots in LA, O'Brien's unfinished manuscript (completed by his sister) imagines a not-to-distant future in which everyone carries guns and mass race rioting and anarchy has spread like wildfire and the entire US is going up in flames. But rather than examine what happens to humanity when there are no rules (Nobel prizewinner Jose Saramago does an amazing job of this in Blindness), O'Brien gives the reader the claustrophobic bunker of Tony's Bar and its alcoholic denizens (plus waitress and busboy). The title nods its head to John Carpenter's excellent 1976 film The Assault on Precinct 13 (itself a loose modernized remake of Howard Hawks' western Rio Bravo), and as in that film, the men holed up in the bar must defend themselves-and more importantly the liquor-from all outside forces.

It's a really interesting idea, undermined only by the fact that alcoholics aren't really very interesting people in general. O'Brien writes from their perspective with a true insider's grasp of what makes them tick, but after about fifty pages or so, their ramblings get kind of old. And unfortunately, the only three non-alcoholics in the book are mere ciphers and much less convincing characters. The waitress and busboy are caricatures of sorts whose actions are exceedingly hard to understand. Later, when the bar takes in a hunted liberal outsider, its as a device for O'Brien to have characters debate. Meanwhile, the ticking clock of the dwindling liquor supply is a neat device on its own, it can't sustain the book on its own. None of this is to say that O'Brien can't write, because in general the prose is quite nice. However, the premise is never fully realized and one could interpret the book as being quite racist. Clearly the guys in the bar are bigots, But in the end the actions of the rioters and busboy serve only to confirm their fears-and presumably O'Brien's own internal demons. It's quick reading, but definitely heavy and not for the faint of heart.

Rating:
Summary: My Own Private Dry Storage
Review: I need to collaborate on a biography of this O'Brien fellow...any takers?

Rating:
Summary: Dark, leaden, despairing, unique
Review: I'm a big admirer of John O'Brien's work but there's something at the heart of this book that transcends literature and gives me the creeps. I have never read a novel that gives off such intensely despairing and black vibrations. There really is a power to this book, but to me it's a negative energy. I had the horrible feeling when reading this of witnessing something that wasn't meant for public view. When you know the history behind this book you'll understand what I mean. I don't mean the prose style -that's just fine- rather the count down to the writer's exit. People have said that "Leaving Las Vegas" was John O'Brien's suicide note -I disagree: this was the note and once you've read it you're not sure you should have. A testament to the unique power that novels still have.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet Little Combination
Review: Well, I've always been a fan of the "end of the world" scenarios. Ranging from Romero's zombie trilogy to anything with nuclear war, and this was a beautiful little twist on it. Told from the point of view of hard core alcoholics. Only work I've read by O'Brien, and I was quite impressed, it's a shame he's not around to keep writing, and expanding his skills. The last paragraph of the book was just perfect. And his sister's afterword is very moving.