A novel about being alone in a crowd, bad vibes, and the death of rock 'n' roll . . .
Camden Joy, with his inimitable torrent of language, sensation, and sound, tells the saga of a once-popular rock 'n' roll band as they cross American from California to Virginia, flying below the Mason-Dixon line and the cultural radar in the heady days of early 1991.
As the Persian Gulf War escalates in the background, we follow the four band members on solo and group adventures amidst the vacuous American landscape of diners, clubs, colleges, and hotels. Throughout the band's journey deep into the heart of an increasingly disposable culture, the country is imagined as a series of random TV landscapes, the future is seen bursting with garbage, the "things of nature" are rendered invisible, and experience itself becomes subordinated to pornography and the merest of junk-food analogies.
A powerful eulogy for the once limitless possibilities of the American road, an anti-"On The Road", 'Boy Island' is an ultimate redemptive meditation on the power of music and love, the only things that can save us.
