Albyn Leah Hall
Albyn Leah Hall was born in New York and lives in London.
THE RHYTHM OF THE ROAD
(St. Martin’s, Jan. 9, 2007)
A truck driver’s daughter who grows up in the front seat of her father’s truck, Jo shares her father’s love of country music, junk food, and the open highway. Jo’s life is a perfect slice of Americana, except that their “open road” is in England, and her father–the gentle, melancholy Bobby Pickering–is from Northern Ireland. The only truly American thing about Jo is her mother, whom she has never met.
Jo is twelve when she and Bobby pick up hitchhiker Cosima Stewart, an American country singer whose band is touring England. They become dedicated fans, and Cosima, touched by the unlikely duo, comes to regard Jo with an indulgent, even sisterly, eye.
But when Jo is sixteen, Bobby sinks into serious despair and Jo seeks refuge in Cosima and the band. When Bobby disappears, Jo’s adoration becomes obsessive as she follows her idol all to the way to California. Here, in the sweltering Mohave Desert and alone for the first time, Jo must face the painful truths of her own life, the mother she has never known, and the father she can’t force from her mind. With shades of Zadie Smith and Mark Haddon, Albyn Leah Hall’s powerful debut is a page-turning study of what frightens us about one another and ourselves; of how we run away and what we can’t, ultimately, escape from.
DELIRIA (Serpent’s Tail, 1993)
As an American attending art school in London, Claudia escapes Los Angeles to live out a carefree yet destructive life. She hasn’t attended classes in months nor does she care what month it is. Her world revolves around her dank flat, smoky pubs, and a drug-dealing boyfriend named Crilly. He is an attractive Irishman known in the underground as a reliable source for a fix. Together they dabble in heroin, experiencing the highs and lows not uncommon to junkies. Seemingly lifeless and aimless, Claudia and Crilly live out a year of family problems, drug busts, and deaths. Though they are deeply in love, they both find a safer happiness apart from each other and apart from heroin. Hall engrosses the reader in this excellent dark, and ironically addicting first novel. Lisa Orzepowski
