Book
Once upon a time, Blood Orphans were the next big thing. They had a fat recording contract, the swagger of the gods, and cheekbones that could cut glass. They were the darlings of the LA music scene. They were locked and loaded for rock and roll greatness. And then everything … went … wrong. The singer became a born-again Buddhist who preaches from the stage. The bass player’s raging eczema turned his hands into a pulpy mess. The drummer, a sex addict tormented by the misdeeds of his porn-king father, is losing his grip on reality. And the guitar player - the only talented one - is a doormat cowed by the constant abuse of his bandmates. Set in Amsterdam on the last day of Blood Orphans’s final tour, Rock Bottom is the raucous story of a band - and their heroically coked-out female manager - trying to get in one last shot at fame’s elusive bullseye. A pitch-black comedy and a journey to the center of the myths of celebrity, Rock Bottom is a wild ride on the crazy train of outrageous misfortune, and a big-hearted paean to the power of dreams. It marks the debut of a fierce new voice in American fiction.
“Two parts ‘Spinal Tap,’ one part Chekhov…Shilling both understands and overstates the cockeyed rock world. Writing about the boredom of touring, and the adoration given to anyone who plays music on a stage, he gets the rhythms as well as the ridiculous logic of the road, as his characters’ distinctive voices mix hyperbole with pop culture references into their own particular narcissistic brews…underneath the broad humor, Shilling also recognizes the humanity of his characters. They create out of their personal pain. Just because their art is of dubious value doesn’t mean that their stories aren’t valid. And between the laughs he lets some recognition shine in. Filthy, covered in sores and disgrace, the Blood Orphans almost earn our - and each other’s - respect. Beer in hand, they will, we sense, rock on.”
– Boston Globe
“Simultaneously bleak and archly funny … A thoughtful snapshot of a crumbling rock ’n’ roll fantasy.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“Finally, at last, an ass-kicking, authentic rock & roll novel, one that peels back the veneer and gloss and–with an insider’s eye–exposes the lovely, wondrous, dirt.”
– David Means, author of The Secret Goldfish
“Rock Bottom is a raunchy, knowing, brilliant novel - a diamond-sharp, lightning-witted, sex-packed, hilarious account of the last days of a fallen-from-grace heavy-metal parody band, marooned in Amsterdam under the crashing ruins of a lost greatness. Shilling, himself a former musician, is our insider guide to the ravages and seductions of the rock-and-roll world, and he describes the sights with a tender, pitch-perfect savagery. But more than this, the novel is a remarkably accomplished piece of art - a complicated survivor’s tale, full of hilarious sadness, virtuous cruelty, beautiful destruction, the sort of book you pick up with high expectations and that, to your surprise and delight, surpasses them all, a book funnier, smarter, sadder, and more inventively composed that you could possibly have hoped. It’s a hit, I mean - I was laughing all the way through, and singing along.”
– Michael Byers, author of Long for This World
“A rock and roll novel at once rocking and rollicking. Rock Bottom knowingly skewers the pretentions of the music business, while never quite taking them seriously, and the result is a simultaneously scabrous yet affectionate portrait of a band and its entourage in the final throes of a tour de farce. Michael Shilling writes with wit, fury and an infectious gusto; it’s the kind of high-energy prose that makes a reader want to get up and strut their stuff.”
– Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
“Michael Shilling’s debut is everything one wants in a novel: tragic and thrilling, farcical and realistic. The prose is exuberant in its range and wildness, but also in its little treasures, its unfoldings and depths. Here is a writer who brings characters to life, circumstances to light, and imbues them with resonance, traveling the whole map of human obsession and longing with breathless energy. This is a sexy, funny novel, but with the kind of profundity we need from our best novelists at this time. Michael Shilling is an important new writer, and this is novel you won’t forget having read.”
– Laura Kasischke, author of The Life Before Her Eyes