Mall - Eric Brogosian ****

I have never heard of the author before, but I came across this book in a second hand store, read the blurb, thought it sounded interesting and decided to give it a whirl. At just over 250 pages it was worth a try and I’m glad I did.

The novel opens with a gory scene that is pretty much carried throughout the storyline. This isn’t one of those books for people that do not like violence. There are 5 main characters, each have their own story that acts as a piece of a jigsaw that sort of combine to make an overall statement. We have Mal, the kind of guy that would find shooting up schools fun, a typical loner that hates anyone and everything. Donna is a housewife looking for some sexual adventure and lives in a sort of daydream fantasizing about her next extra marital lay. Jeff is a young hippylike character that is almost continually on an acid trip whilst imagining he is going to be the next great American writer. And lastly we have Danny and Adelle, he is a sexually frustrated yuppie, while she is a sadist. Mal decides to exact revenge upon his local shopping mall and accompanied with a small arsenal shoots up the place, all hell breaks loose and the people surrounding it act in different ways. The other characters, although not directly linked to Mal, are in the vicinity and dealing with their own issues. The chapters alternate between each characters story and is quite a clever way of building the picture of the incident as a whole.

Definitely a motley bunch of characters, but they all bounce off each other and create a really fast moving and interesting plot. There was the odd storyline I thought a little ridiculous but I get the feeling that that is what this book was all about, just the author and the reader rolling along together, wondering what will happen next. A high paced, straight to the point novel, I will be looking to read more by Brogosian. I’m not sure if this has been made into a film, but if not, I really hope someone has bought the film rights. ( )

Quick read, but fairly one-dimensional characters result. Tells the story of Mal, the Methed-out Mall Shooter from the viewpoints of several Mallrats With Issues. Bogosian captures the voices of the teens in the novel fairly well, but the adults seem to be written from a teenager's view of how adults would think (particularly Danny, a yuppie who gets busted watching a housewife striptease in a dressing room and subsequently obsesses over how This Ticket Will End His Life.) Although there are several transitory moments of truth and humor, I was strangely unmoved at the eventual demise of certain characters, and felt nothing much stronger than indifference. ( )