From the back of the book:
Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, is the center of the hipster universe, and the members of the
Whole Sick Crew are its shining stars. The gang includes Wolfgang, a
heavy metal musician and high school guidance counselor who supplies
coke to his charges; Rad, a doctor obsessed with obscure new wave songs
who has a bad habit of cutting himself when he's stressed; Beth Ann,
the neighborhood's queen knitter who's slowly going blind and Harrison,
a museum curator moonlighting as a writer of highly prized porn.
Collectively, they're the arbiters of taste for every vinyl-loving,
Gap-spurning, thrift store regular in town. But lately someone has been
laying waste to Brooklyn's über-hipsters, dispatching them in gruesome
fashion.
The
cops are dragging their heels, but the Whole Sick Crew knows that a
serial killer dubbed Doctor Jeep is responsible. They have a plan to
stop him—and it's about to go spectacularly awry. Before the week is
over, they'll be up to their skinny-jeaned waists in mayhem,
manipulation, contract killers, raw sewage, and murderous monkeys.
Something is rotten in the state of Billyburg, and the last hipsters
standing will discover just how rotten it really is...
My review:
They stalk on spiderlike legs wearing jeans
tighter than an old woman's... shoes. As they are the scourge
of Starbucks baristas, so also Hipsters are the bones of this novel,
but don't for a minute assume they're the flesh of it. Rayo
Casablanca's debut is as dark as it is hilarious, as encapsulating as
it is clever. He leads us by the hand so charmingly through places so
noir their bars sell bourbon on tap and we're left smiling deftly with
two toddler steps after each of his morbid strides. From
Paleontological pornography to a gangster with the best name in fiction,
6 Sick Hipsters leaves no stone unturned and when you're not laughing
out loud you're silently nodding with a half-shameful envy.
Aside
from the vinyl and drainpipes the novel stipulates pop-culture trivia
like monastic creed and at a swollen and malformed range accepted only
by the vicious trend setters themselves. From Thomas Pynchon to The
Sisters of Mercy, 6 Sick Hipsters swells with allusions, but ultimately
the novel's charm comes from the juxtaposition of iniquitous comedy,
sly satire and a subculture fetish, and by His good graces is it done well. All in all a funny, dark and clever debut. Definitely one to pick up.
6 Sick Hipsters homepage
Amazon.com page
Powell's page
Kensington (the publisher) Page
P.S. Is this the sort of review we give here?