Dance, Recover, Repeat

From an edgy new voice comes a frenetic novel about boredom, porn, and pills. Brandishing a unique, comic worldview, Alasdair Duncan assembles a surprising, devastating narrative using dialogue, emails, Internet chats, fantasies, notebook entries, blips from video games, and more.

Calvin is sixteen and bored with suburban life. But in the city, things are altogether more exciting. It's there that Calvin meets Anthony -- and the two boys quickly become obsessed with each other. Then Calvin discovers pictures of Anthony on a pornographic website and is drawn into his new friend's seedy underworld. Just as he's discovering what's like when first love meets first sex, when friendship meets lust, and when love meets loss, his teen angst morphs into full-on self-destructivness...and puts him on the path to an absolutely shocking series of events.

With total command of the world he creates for his characters -- in which the computer is just another pill you can pop, another way to run and hide, like drinking or drugging or having sex -- Alsdair Duncan makes an auspicious debut.