Monday, April 28, 2014

I'll Be Damned, Downers Grove!


From Michael Hornburg's Downers Grove:

"The branches looked like twisted wizard canes creeping up from some Gothic underworld deep below the surface of clover-choked grass."

~and~

"Long shafts of blood-orange light swept through the hardy green stalks."

Not since Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned have I been dropped so completely into such an intimate, revelatory peek at the Chicago suburbs during one's angsty teen years. And, in the case of Downers Grove, the suburb where I was born and lived till I was two! Lo and behold, Lemont, Illinois -- where I lived from two till twelve -- also plays strongly into the narrative as both a physical & thematic presence; the petrochemical fire spewing polluted smoke over Lemont parallels the anxious, festering, adolescent decay gripping hold of protagonist Chrissie Swanson's heart. While I ultimately spent my own angsty teen years right over the Wisconsin border in Lake Geneva, I can feel, taste, touch, hear, see Michael Hornburg's literary world. He has the talent to take the read into all five senses, and for those of us who spent formative years thereabouts, he helps us remember consciously what our subconscious has long held to be true. He makes Downers Grove not just a setting, but a character -- a living, breathing entity sucking at the souls of the town's youth. But Chrissie Swanson won't go down without a fight. I'm rooting for her.

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