Genre: Memoir/Travel/Short
Story
Description:
“This is what can happen when a personal story of trauma meets the
collective horror of an apocalyptic, true-life event: in this case, 9/11.”
Author:
“David Antrobus was born in Manchester, England, raised in the English
Midlands, and currently resides near Vancouver, Canada. He writes music
reviews, articles, creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. The lessons he
learned from working for two decades with abused and neglected street kids will
never leave him.”
For more, visit Antrobus’ website.
Appraisal:
Until the day I die, I’ll remember what I did the night of September
10, 2001. I attended the Minneapolis stop of what was billed as the “Slewfoot
Calvacade of Stars,” a tour of small Midwestern clubs by the top (really almost
all) music acts on a tiny Ozark record label. It was a late night and I
intended to sleep in the next morning. Then my girlfriend’s phone call woke me
up. “I think you better turn on the TV,” was all she said. I turned on the TV
to see a plane fly into a building for the first of several times that day. A
few years later I talked to the late Duane Jarvis and Stevie Newman, frontman
for the Domino Kings, both of whom had played that night. I mentioned the date
and they immediately remembered where they’d been and told me about being
awoken the next morning with the news that the two remaining shows on the tour
were cancelled. As soon as they could, they were on the road, to Nashville and
Springfield, their respective homes. Like the day Kennedy was shot, that day is
cemented in the minds of all of us who lived through it.
David Antrobus remembers that morning too. He woke up in Vancouver,
got in his car, and headed for New York. It was a road trip to visit friends
that, as he heard and eventually saw what had happened, became much more.
Recently diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), Antrobus was to
see much of the same symptoms among the residents of New York. One of the ways
of dealing with a stressful event is to talk about it, which he did to many New
Yorkers he met, and continues doing here, telling us what he saw and felt, and
how he reacted.
Dissolute
Kinship packs a big emotional punch in a small number of words. I loved
Antrobus’ writing style, which to me felt almost literary, but it was in the
conclusions he drew where I found the biggest payoff. What do the events of
9/11 say about the world and our place in it? In Dissolute Kinship you’ll find one Canadian’s opinion and, agree or
disagree, realize that the most important thing is to keep the conversation
going.
FYI:
A small amount of adult language.
Added for
Reprise Review: Dissolute
Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip by David Antrobus was the WINNER in the Memoir
category for B&P 2013 Readers' Choice Awards. Original review ran June 29,
2012.____
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 5-6,000 words
