I have had this book, The Salt Point by Paul Russell, sitting on my night stand since July 15th. I started reading it and got about 100 pages into the book and then put it down. I went on vacation and took the book with me but did not read it. Every night before going to sleep I’d see that book sitting there waiting for me to finish it. The past week I read a few pages each night determined to finish this book. I finally did last night.

“From the award-winning author of The Coming Storm comes the brilliantly conceived and precisely rendered novel The Salt Point, which explores the lives of four people-Anatole, Leigh, Chris, and Lydia-and their intermingled and unwinding desires. Set in a Poughkeepsie mall, the Main Street to a new generation, the novel follows these characters as they achieve their oddly triumphant lives redolent with loss and hope, humor and sadness, union and alienation. As promises are diminished and futures are abandoned, all four are hurtled toward that place in which everything is transmuted-the salt point.”

I had such a hard time getting into this story. It kept jumping from character to character. The story wasn’t all that complicated and was a good story but the way it was put together just bothered me. I couldn’t keep up with where we were in the story with all the jumping. Once I started reading it again, I was able to keep up and follow the lives of these people. I did like how it took place in the ’80s. The author noted songs from the ’80s and styles from the ’80s that I could relate to. I won’t give the ending but I will say that I didn’t like it. I understand why he ended it the way he did, I just didn’t like it.

I’ve read other books by Paul Russell and still have one more on my stack to read but this one won’t be one that I’d recommend to others. I’d say pick up War Against The Animals. It’s much better.

Next up is Belmondo Style by Adam Berlin.

From the publisher:

“Jared Chiziver is a single father and professional pickpocket, devotee of Jean-Paul Belmondo and foreign films, and a suave ladies’ man. His son, Ben, is sixteen, a bookish semi-introvert, a star on his school’s track team, college bound, and gay. Their unusual but quiet and affectionate life in New York City’s Greenwich Village is ripped asunder by two singular events. First, Jared finally meets “the one,” Anna, a photographer of criminals and death scenes – a woman he finds endlessly engaging. Second, in response to a brutal attack upon his son, Jared breaks his own cardinal rule and commits the big crime, the one that draws the unflinching attention of the police. The only response possible to these events is to leave New York one step ahead of the authorities and embark upon a journey of both escape and discovery that will irrevocably change their lives.”

This doesn’t sound like the books I’m used to reading but it’s got a gay character and that’s the main point to all the books I read. It sounds too mystery, crime, suspence like for my tastes but I’m going to give it a try and see if I like it. I won’t take as long to read this one as I did the last one I’m sure. I’m going to make myself read more often now. And of course I’ll write about it when I’m done reading it.