Road Tripping Essay, Research Paper

Road trippingA by Tom Bullough 256pp, Sort Of BooksSeveral years after the world grew tired of “chemical generation” drug lit, along comes A, the debut novel from 26-year-old Tom Bullough. A stood for acid long before E stood for ecstasy, but acid is still around, even if confined to small communities of desperately unfashionable middle-class students and graduates. In A, several such longhaired misfits occupy a scruffy house in a smart London suburb, where they smoke weed and watch daytime TV. Two of the group, Paolo and Nick, have an LSD factory hidden in the loft, quietly distilling 100,000 trips for a gangster named Steve Fisk. The house is raided by two even more unfashionable policemen: Hilary Hooey, with his dated flat-top and cheesy moustache, and Norman Teather, who sports “an unfortunate swept-over hairstyle”. One of the more amusing moments sees Paolo being led out of the house “in handcuffs and denim flares”. Nick is arrested too, but the acid factory isn’t found and the two are soon released. However, on hearing of the police interest, Fisk decides that Paolo and Nick are trying to set him up, and – Fisk being a very dangerous man – everyone in the house leaps into a decommissioned ambulance to head for a remote cottage on the Welsh border. Unfortunately, it is occupied by a friend who went there for peace and quiet after losing it on one too many ecstasy tablets, and may not be pleased to see them. This is a story of outsiders. Even the police occupy an uncertain space: Hooey’s task is to “rid the country of illegal drugs”, we are told. “He hadn’t the resources, and never would have, and no-one in the country – including him – thought it was possible.” Towards the end, as Fisk and the police close in, the story becomes almost unbearably tense, despite being slowed down by an abundance of confusing metaphors. “The puddles in the field gleamed like holes in the hillside.” If a puddle gleams, can it also look like a hole? A reads more like a first draft than a polished novel, but is immensely enjoyable none the less.· Daren King is the author of Boxy an Star (Abacus)