NO NAMES, a #PrideMonth debut novel from a poet via Minneapolis's estimable Coffee House Press

NO NAMES
GREG HEWETT
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$17.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late '70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.

Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now, in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysterious letter from an unlikely fan named Isaac arrives, he's pulled right back into the pain he’s spent over a decade running from.

Isaac longs for an escape from his lonely teenage life. A chance discovery of the No Names’ only album catapults him into an obsession with the godlike rockers and the tantalizing possibility of connection.

As their stories collide, mistakes breed consequences that echo through the decades like the furious reverberations of a power chord.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Two-thirds of an excellent novel...after the twist, it's not excellent anymore. It's good, and as a contrast to almost two hundred pages of really outstanding build-up, I felt really let down by the ending. It was a messy trailing-off of several conversations, between characters and us, as well as each other. Multiple PoV novels are always...baggy...but this one's excitement and intensity came from the sense I had in the first part of the book that each person was picking up the thread of a narrative, was the response part in a call-and-response composition.

Much of that energy came from the way the voices wove around each other as they spoke of the times and events that the narrator before had no way of knowing. By the two-thirds mark, they were not telling the same story. They were following their own strands into a future not shared; it's like life, you meet, connect, intertwine for a time, then the time is over. The problem I had with that in this context is that it takes me from one kind of book...close harmony call-and-response...into another, the oratorio going chapter-and-verse through the wind-up of the stories I'd previously experienced directly.

What started as a five-star read ended at three and three-quarters because the narrative drive leaked right out, becoming severe with Mike's relating with the reader how Isaac fits in with the story. I began to nit-pick characters' word choices, their manner of addressing the facts they presented. That is never a good sign. I was disinvesting before the book ended.

But my goddesses, that first bit! A true joy of reading time spent well, and in the presence of a talented voice in storytelling. So not-quite four stars to celebrate the first novel of a writer whose next novel I want to read as soon as he writes it.