Another Day in Paradise - Hardcover

Little, Eddie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670872172 ISBN 13: 9780670872176

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1998

Synopsis

Bobbie, a fourteen-year-old hustler, junkie, and petty thief serving his apprenticeship with Mel, a professional crook and drug addict, learns life's hard lessons while searching for the perfect score. A first novel. Tour.

About this title

About the Author:

Eddie Little has spent many years in prison. Rehabilitated from drugs, he currently runs We Care, a Los Angeles-based organisation providing assistance to house-bound AIDS patients and the elderly.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A gutsy, fresh, and fierce drug novel, something like walking over broken glass barefoot, by first-novelist and former addict Little. Most of the story, set during the late '60s and early '70s in the Midwest and California, has an autobiographical tang. Bobbie, the 14-year-old Irish hero, has been on the street since he was 11, and hasn't much hope of living to 20. As Bobbie matures into a copper-bottomed Huck Finn on heroin, pursuing a life of crime and bloodshed, one fears that the novel's big rainbow buzz will fade and Bobbie head for rehab. But since 12- step programs haven't yet been invented, all stays hopped up and oblivion-bound till the end. Before the drug takes charge of him, Bobbie is braced--even empowered--by the heroin. But after a year of this, no amount of the stuff can return him to well-being. The good days, he realizes, are gone forever, and the need to support his habit with various crimes, petty and big-time, only intensifies. And so little Bobbie takes up with a professional burglar named Mel, twice his age, who recruits him as a worthy sidekick for drug errands usually run around midnight. Bobbie, near the same time, falls in love with Rosie, a star-crossed 17- year-old, also a druggie. Little's strongest suit is to suggest Bobbie's masked fear of exposing his love and friendship for Rosie and Mel: A pro, after all, is supposed to show no feeling. Little keeps Bobbie's emotions capped but pulsating at every step of the way. Little, who runs an AIDS assistance organization in Los Angeles, writes like a bad dream on wheels, unique in the electric authenticity that he brings to every sentence. The stages of addiction have seldom been so vividly drawn. (Film rights to Miramax; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0670872172
• ISBN 13: 9780670872176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272