Bluestown

On the heels of his marvelous debut in the short-story collection Dangerous Men (Forecasts, Dec. 9, 1995), Becker delivers a first novel that enhances his promise as a major voice in American fiction. This confident and touching work opens as 15-year-old narrator Spencer Markus, without his mother's knowledge, embarks on a road trip with his estranged father, Spider, a small-time blues guitarist. Ostensibly, they are heading to Montreal for an audition. But when Spencer gets ditched in a Vermont bus station with $800 in cash-the sum total of his patrimony-he realizes that there is no audition but only, ""for a brief while, an idea about the two of us starting over again someplace else."" Seven years later, Spencer is living in Brooklyn, working as the customer service rep for Mutronics, a shady manufacturer of electronic guitar aids. His main duty there is to glibly respond to angry letters-reproduced in the text-from customers, their lawyers, Better Business Bureaus and even the occasional prison inmate. Spider's reappearance (in the product-testing room) throws Spencer's life into chaos: his girlfriend leaves, Mutronics declares bankruptcy and a blow to the head earns the young man a trip to the hospital and two holes in his skull. There are high times with Spider as well, such as the Christmas Eve the two spend in a Manhattan blues bar almost picking up models and sitting in with the band. But Spencer mostly floats along in a haze, without ambition, until a shockingly violent act frees him from his ambivalence. Becker is a gifted writer. His prose is steady, authentic and punctuated by intense metaphors. Here, he has produced an exceptional debut novel, full of bittersweet truths and appealing characters. (May)