Review
WL Rating
Praise Jesus. After more than 100 book reviews, I finally find one about my favorite break, Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Fantastic, couldn’t be happier. Then I read it. Penned by new novelist Jacob Ray, The Ride Home is flat out dark. If I had taken a moment to read the self-promoting copy in the Amazon store, I would have been better prepared for this book: “Get the #1 BestSeller in books on Suicide...” Seriously? I guess if that is a book’s most compelling sales point, you know you’re in for a dark, messed up ride, and The Ride Home didn’t disappoint. Featuring three, count ‘em three, suicides within roughly 200 pages, the book describes the self-destructive lives of a half dozen miscreants living near Ocean Beach. All of the characters suffer from varying levels of drug use, physical and mental abuse, violence, and alcohol addiction. Surfing doesn’t feature much in the book, aside from being the one sane thread that ties, but doesn’t save, the majority of the characters. There really isn’t much in the way of a story here either, but I still found myself wanting to turn each perverse page. Chalk this up to the author’s ability to create believable, albeit massively flawed, characters. Had he managed to weave a tighter, more compelling story, this could have been a fantastic book. In the end, The Ride Home was more akin to watching a weird David Lynch movie that you may not understand, but you can’t quite bring yourself to switch off. (December 2010)
The Ride Home - Jacob Ray
