Ali Eskandarian
Golden Years
Synopsis: It’s the story of Iranian American musicians, told first person by a member of the social circle.
By in large I enjoyed this book, it’s in a similar vein to Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in terms of the fact that it doesn’t really have a set temporal structure. The scenes didn’t really flow that well for me, for example there is a passage when the narrator is having sex, he thinks about ‘Complete symmetry…elastic distortions of reality…what time?’ and then they’re going to the beach.
It deals with drug use, sexual situations, and drinking, which is what you expect, given the age and the profession of the characters. I mean the characters are in their twenties, and the music industry, even though these characters don’t seem to have been intended to be household names, is somewhere that it is reportedly reasonably easy to get hold of drugs if that’s what you want to do.
I don’t think it’s quite as good as the reviews on the back seem to think that it is. I do feel that it was a great shame that this is the only book that Eskandarian will ever have published, given that he was murdered not long before the book was published. He seems to have been a fairly accomplished writer, I don’t know anything about his music, as he was a musician as well.
Golden Years seems to be a semi autobiographical novel, as Eskandarian himself was a Iranian American musician, I don’t know anything about his personal life, to know if he was as sexually active as the narrator is.
It’s a interesting book, and if you’re a reader who enjoys books without a strict narrative structure then I consider it to be well worth a look.
Musings of a thirtysomething woman 