Sean Beaudoin

Fade to Blue is easily among the weirdest books I’ve ever read – and the most engaging. The heroine, Sophie Blue – or Gothika, as her not-so-friendly classmates call her – is haunted by visions of a mad popsicle truck driver, and thinks she hears a voice telling her to visit ‘the lab.’ Sophie’s best friend, Lake, an ex-cheerleader-turned-paraplegic, has little advice to offer. Her mother is too depressed and disconnected to help. The school counselor only makes her write show more essays, and her brother, O.S., is seemingly too caught up in his comic books to do anything but get fatter. But when Kenny Fade, basketball star, starts to question his perfect life, reality begins to unravel, and Sophie is forced to confront something she has been trying to put past her: the disappearance of her father. With its references to pop culture, snarky sense of humor, and a pleathora of bizarre characters, Fade to Blue will stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page. show less

This book was weird and at times confusing, but completely fun and entertaining to read. Just when you think you know where the book was going, a new twist would be thrown at you, or you'd come across a comic or a chapter written totally in binary code. And with chapters that counted up and then back down and had titles like: "I'd laugh if someone had bothered to program me a mouth," "Ketchup is a Vegetable" and " It's just like a horror movie, except no cameras or lights or actors, and it show more goes on forever" you can't help but be amused. show less

From the beginning of Welcome Thieves, Sean Beaudoin’s first story collection, you realize you’re in rare literary territory, the text before you built not only on erudition and propulsive (at times near breathless) prose but drugs and crime, rock n’ roll and philosophy. Above all else, though, there’s humor. Beaudoin is, no question, one of the funniest, hippest writers out there.

Plumbing the quest for sensory experience at the heart of youth, Beaudoin’s style recalls T.C. show more Boyle’s, a flash of formal experimentalism (Coover? Celine?) thrown in to keep the reader off-kilter. The mix is a highly enjoyable, stone-cold literary endeavor that manages to succeed on a commercial level as well. These aren’t “New Yorker stories” per se—you’re not going to find some middle-aged dentist bitching about his Mercedes in Beaudoin’s pages—but they’re so polished you can’t help but see the potential for them to reach (and please) a mass audience.

From Beaudoin’s fearless use (and purposeful misuse) of pop culture, particularly the fight game in “And Now Let’s Have Some Fun”, to the macabre, apocalyptic satire of “Base Omega Has Twelve Dictates”, his spin on a sort of creation myth in the title story, “Welcome Thieves”, and the failed Americana at the heart of the entire collection, perhaps most notably in “The Rescues”, these stories succeed without exception.

On the off chance that Beaudoin’s six previous books and his massive output of quality nonfiction (Salon, The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings) hadn’t confirmed his talent, Welcome Thieves is sure to. Sure, likewise, to prove attempts at comparison must in the end fall short. There’s just no other writer quite like Sean Beaudoin. Read him and be glad you did.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/kbaumeister/2016/07/the-nervous-breakdowns-re... show less

What happens when you cross improvisational theatre with a literary event looking to create a truly collaborative novel? For me, the answer to that question is Hotel Angeline, a novel written in chapters penned by each of 36 participating authors - including two chapters with a graphic approach to the story - over the course of 6 days. A writing marathon, if you will. The end result: a fun, refreshing and quirky coming-of-age story that has its unexpected left turns while still retaining a show more unified, collective voice.

The story focuses on 14 year-old Alexis Austin, our narrator. Alexis lives in the Hotel Angeline, a run down residential hotel/apartment building her mother Edith runs, with Alexis' assistance, on Seattle's Capitol Hill. The Hotel Angeline has an interesting past, as a former mortuary, and an eccentric group of residents that are as much a part of the building as the creaky stairs and the bad plumbing. While only fourteen, Alexis has been doing more around the hotel to help out since her mom became sick. When one of the residents, LJ, informs Alexis of a phone message he took for Alexis' mom, Alexis takes on adult responsibilities in an effort to keep the life she knows at the Hotel Angeline.

That is all I will mention about the plot as it is difficult to summarize the plot without giving away the interesting plot developments. I loved this novel for a number of reasons. First off, The characters are fantastic. Second, the story is unpredictable, which provided an extra level of interest for me as I am not a fan of formula plots where I can predict what will happen next. Third, it is not just a coming-of-age story. It has a nice mix of mystery, YA, fantasy, comedy and tragedy. Lastly, I loved the fact that you could feel the story shift and develop in unique and wonderful ways under the pen of each author as they took they turn picking up the story where their fellow authors had left off, and just running with it!

If you are expecting exceptional literature, well, as mentioned in the forward written by Garth Stein, "It was never our intention to accomplish in six days what took James Joyce eighteen years to accomplish with Ulysses; we knew we were not writing a literary masterpiece. It was our intention to build a solid, fun story that was a collaboration between three dozen writers, various editors, and an audience both live and virtual - what we created was a community." I think the group hit their mark with Hotel Angeline and I can confidently say that this is a novel I recommend for anyone that is looking for a fun, offbeat and endearing coming of age story. show less