Amazon.co.uk Review
Not since SE Hinton (The Outsiders) has a female novelist penned such a tough and titillating portrait of lower-class, crime-ridden manhood than Tawni O'Dell in Back Roads. Set in "beautiful, ruined" western Pennsylvania, amid Eat n' Parks and Lick n' Putts, the novel follows Harley Altmyer as he walks a raging, self-conscious line between crime and innocence. Why is he being held by the authorities, and what's he so mad about? In the recent past, it's his mother, who murdered his father and went to jail for life. In the far past, it's Dad himself: an abusive, hopeless man. In the present, it's the responsibility for h is three younger sisters, which makes him fantasize about smashing their faces in until they "spit up bloody macaroni and cheese".
This first novel opens well. O'Dell does an impeccable job of making Harley both brutal and forgivable but Back Roads risks becoming an overabundant affair, pitched high, with a roller-coaster trajectory. Harley' s anger metamorphoses into an almost bloodthirsty lust for his sexy, middle-aged neighbour, which stirs up myriad forbidden family secrets. Misty, it turns out, has been hiding something. Amber revolts. And even Jody's scribbles turn malevolent. While the writing is good throughout, the tension and plotting assume an unpleasant adolescent posture--bodice-ripping passion and mordant gloom combined. Nonetheless, O'Dell's assured and touching portrait of her protagonist emerges unscathed. You will likely remember luckless, fated Harley Altmyer long after his tsunamic tale has receded. --Jean Lenihan, Amazon.com
Review
"* 'Tense...Involving...deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy who's in trouble' New York Times Book Review. * 'Poignant...achingly beautiful prose...remarkable' San Diego Union. * 'A page-turner...gritty, funny, sexy' Chicago Sun-Times. * 'An intense story of family, frailty, and dysfunction, set in the coal mining towns of western Pennsylvania...captivatingly told' Chicago Tribune. * 'O'Dell has tackled the real stuff of stories and she's done it with compassion and a unique voice...a writer of promise' New York Newsday. * 'Do not miss this one' Mademoiselle.
New York Times
Tense, conflicted and involving, o'Dell deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy who's in trouble and facing profound challenges.
Chicago Tribune
An intense story of family, fraility and dysfunction captivatingly told.
San Diego Union
Heart-breakingly honest...Beautifully written...A journey into the world of dysfunctional despair.
Product Description
Teenager Harley Altmyer's mother is in prison for murdering his father. What with work, three sisters to care for and a lousy sex life, things surely can't get much worse, or can they? He is about to find out when he begins an affair with a married woman.
From the Back Cover
One day Harley Altmyer was 18 and thinking about making some kind of life. He had a family he loved and he figured it was time to get a job. Before he has the chance, his life is a minefield: his father is dead, his mother in prison for the murder, three younger sisters to care for, and there's not too much time left over for himself. Suddenly he has two crummy jobs, a fantasy sex life, big worries about the kids and a court-appointed therapist.
A intense physical relationship with a woman living down the road seems to offer a way out, the answer to his problems. But little can he realise that those problems are only just beginning...
About the Author
Tawni O'Dell has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University, she lives in Illinois.
Excerpted from Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
All those times me and Skip tried to kill his little brother, Donny, were just for fun. I keep telling the deputies this, and they keep picking up their Styrofoam cups of coffee and walking away only to return a few seconds later and heave their fat butt cheeks onto the metal-topped table in front of me and flash me sad,weary stares that would be almost tender if they weren't filled with so much hatred. They tell me theydon't care about Skip and Donny. They're not interested in stuff I did when I was a kid. I'm twenty years old now. I will be TRIED AS AN ADULT. The words come out of their mouths in Skoal-flavored capital letters and hover against the fluorescent glare of the room. I reach out to touch them but before I can, they melt away again and one of the deputies slaps down my hands stained the color of a dead rose. They won't let me wash them.
They want to know about the woman. I laugh. Which woman? My life is lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes, and levels of purity.
'The dead woman in the abandoned mining office behind the railroad tracks,' one of them says, making a face like he might puke.
I close my eyes and picture it. The roof with gaping holes. The rotting floorboards scattered with broken window glass, rusted screws and bolts, and pieces of flattened iron that used to be part of something bigger a long time ago. When I finally took her there, she didn't ask me to sweep it out. She said she didn't want to change anything about it because she knew it was a special place for me. She said she loved the calm of decay and desertion that reigned there. She liked art and sometimes the way she talked sounded like a painting.
Rage starts building inside me, nicely and neatly, like a perfect pyramid of sticks being piled up for a fire. My hands start shaking, and I sit on them so the police won't see.
'Me and Skip used the mining office for our secret hideout,' I answer, smiling, while the blaze roars to life inside me. Soon I will be nothing but a black skeleton of ash that the slightest touch will cause to crumble. But no one on the outside will know.
The deputies shake their heads and groan and snort at the mention of Skip. One of them kicks a folding chair across the room. Another one says, 'The kid's inshock.' The other one says, 'We're not going to get anything RELEVANT or COHERENT out of him tonight.' I reach for those words too and this time I get the side of my head smacked instead of my sticky hands.
'You better start talking,' the sheriff says, pausing to spit a brown bullet of chew into an empty coffee can before adding, 'son,' to his suggestion.
He's the only one here I know. I remember him from my mom's trial two years ago. He testified that she gave herself up willingly after shooting my dad. He smells like a wet couch.
I do start talking but all that comes out is the samestuff about me and Skip again, how we used to spend hours in the old mining office eating bologna sandwiches and hatching our plans against Donny. We called it secret even though Donny knew where wewere. It was secret because he couldn't get to it. Hewas too little to make it up the hill and through the vicious undergrowth surrounding the place like nature's barbed wire.
We came up with some great ones. Once we bent down a birch sapling and anchored it to the ground with a tent stake and tied a rope loop to it, then luredDonny into the middle with a shiny foil-wrapped HoHo. The tree was supposed to break free and fling him to his death by his ankles, but we realized too late we hadn't figured out a way to make it do this, and Donny just finished the HoHo and left.
Another time we spilled a bunch of marbles on the back porch steps and yelled at him to come outside, we had a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies for him. He came tearing out of the house but instead of slipping and falling on the marbles, he skidded to a stop and sat down and played with them.
Another time we promised him a box of Little Debbie Star Crunches if he would let us tie up his feetand hands and lay him on the railroad tracks but they were freight tracks - the same ones that run bythe old mine - and we all knew a train hadn't been down them since before we were born. Donny gotbored waiting to die and started wriggling toward home on his belly.
All those times me and Skip tried to kill his little brother, Donny, were just for fun. I keep telling the deputies this, and they keep picking up their Styrofoam cups of coffee and walking away only to return a few seconds later and heave their fat butt cheeks onto the metal-topped table in front of me and flash me sad,weary stares that would be almost tender if they weren't filled with so much hatred. They tell me theydon't care about Skip and Donny. They're not interested in stuff I did when I was a kid. I'm twenty years old now. I will be TRIED AS AN ADULT. The words come out of their mouths in Skoal-flavored capital letters and hover against the fluorescent glare of the room. I reach out to touch them but before I can, they melt away again and one of the deputies slaps down my hands stained the color of a dead rose. They won't let me wash them.
They want to know about the woman. I laugh. Which woman? My life is lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes, and levels of purity.
'The dead woman in the abandoned mining office behind the railroad tracks,' one of them says, making a face like he might puke.
I close my eyes and picture it. The roof with gaping holes. The rotting floorboards scattered with broken window glass, rusted screws and bolts, and pieces of flattened iron that used to be part of something bigger a long time ago. When I finally took her there, she didn't ask me to sweep it out. She said she didn't want to change anything about it because she knew it was a special place for me. She said she loved the calm of decay and desertion that reigned there. She liked art and sometimes the way she talked sounded like a painting.
Rage starts building inside me, nicely and neatly, like a perfect pyramid of sticks being piled up for a fire. My hands start shaking, and I sit on them so the police won't see.
'Me and Skip used the mining office for our secret hideout,' I answer, smiling, while the blaze roars to life inside me. Soon I will be nothing but a black skeleton of ash that the slightest touch will cause to crumble. But no one on the outside will know.
The deputies shake their heads and groan and snort at the mention of Skip. One of them kicks a folding chair across the room. Another one says, 'The kid's inshock.' The other one says, 'We're not going to get anything RELEVANT or COHERENT out of him tonight.' I reach for those words too and this time I get the side of my head smacked instead of my sticky hands.
'You better start talking,' the sheriff says, pausing to spit a brown bullet of chew into an empty coffee can before adding, 'son,' to his suggestion.
He's the only one here I know. I remember him from my mom's trial two years ago. He testified that she gave herself up willingly after shooting my dad. He smells like a wet couch.
I do start talking but all that comes out is the samestuff about me and Skip again, how we used to spend hours in the old mining office eating bologna sandwiches and hatching our plans against Donny. We called it secret even though Donny knew where wewere. It was secret because he couldn't get to it. Hewas too little to make it up the hill and through the vicious undergrowth surrounding the place like nature's barbed wire.
We came up with some great ones. Once we bent down a birch sapling and anchored it to the ground with a tent stake and tied a rope loop to it, then luredDonny into the middle with a shiny foil-wrapped HoHo. The tree was supposed to break free and fling him to his death by his ankles, but we realized too late we hadn't figured out a way to make it do this, and Donny just finished the HoHo and left.
Another time we spilled a bunch of marbles on the back porch steps and yelled at him to come outside, we had a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies for him. He came tearing out of the house but instead of slipping and falling on the marbles, he skidded to a stop and sat down and played with them.
Another time we promised him a box of Little Debbie Star Crunches if he would let us tie up his feetand hands and lay him on the railroad tracks but they were freight tracks - the same ones that run bythe old mine - and we all knew a train hadn't been down them since before we were born. Donny gotbored waiting to die and started wriggling toward home on his belly.
