OUT OF STEP & OUT OF DETROIT

Out of Step & Out of Detroit is a fairly funny but frustrating account of a young woman's coming of age in the 1960s in Detroit and San Francisco. It is related in a stream of consciousnesss /stand-up comedy style that crackles along briskly but leaves little room for emotional response to the information, beyond a chuckle or guffaw. The narrator is an ineffectual, obnoxious, spoiled brat whose dependence on men for validation is reminiscent of an addiction to drugs, making even the chuckle difficult to manage sometimes. Samantha opens this memoir with her decision to lose her virginity in her junior year at college. Her attempt to feel liberated begins with her "desperately waiting on David's bed for three hours with some grim determination to have fun." It is a space she occupies (metaphorically speaking) most of the time. The fault for Samantha's lack of desirability and experience is laid at her mother's feet where it remains for the rest of the story.The author is Una Zero, which is the mom de plume of a "well-known Berkeley writer," according to the press release. Her facility with language is extraordinary; she creates rhythms in dialogue the way musicians do. Each phrase is poetically constructed. Her long, solid paragraphs of narrative read like Ophelia doingJoan Rivers. But her relentless venom and self-pity overwhelm most of the humor and block the empathy we might feel for the character. "Sex was something I had received no home instruction in. My parents probably thought of it as some recently discovered distant planet, visible only with special devices, invisible to the mortal eye. And just as well. Given their batting average, if they could have poisoned my sexuality they would certainly have been capable. Not especially through malice of forethought but more naturally as any infected person spreads their disease by their mere presence." That a young person thinks of her parents as destructive alien creatures is certainly not new but her malevolence feels gratuitous. This is a very short book. If "Una Zero" works on a longer novel in the future perhaps her clever writing will include empathy for more than one of her characters, which will allow the reader more easy access. If not, her work will remain only a clever curiosity. -- From Independent Publisher