Dark Rides

McCormack is a special writer, blessed with that rare ability where less truly is more.... this is an excellent read.

One of the best short stories I have ever read (along with Yann Martel's "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Rocammatios and Willa Cather's "Paul's Case.") McCormack's is a brilliant technician who is also quite capable of capturing mood and texture. His writing is sparse, economic and efficient. He glides over weeks and months in one sentence. His writing is heart-quickening, and exhilarating.

In spare words and images, Derek has captured the passion of adolescence and the pain of being gay in some small town, somwhere.

A friend of mine picked up "Dark Rides" in a used bookstore, read the first page, put it back down and walked out of the store. He was three blocks away when he realized he couldn't get the spooky, sexy tone of "Dark Rides" out of his head. He went back and bought it, finishing it that same afternoon. He leant it to me that night and I was done by morning. "Dark Rides" is so ethereal in feel and so radical in style, it seems odd calling it a novel. McCormack's conjurings of a 1950s fantasy world where Hank Williams can be seen as a queer icon, and where alienation is a blessing, has more in common with a really good Morrissey song than with most contemporary novels. The author juxtaposes a whispering prose (which reads like a dream, or a nightmare you might enjoy) with a gallery of stirring McCarthy era Americana photographs, creating a mood which lingers long after you turn the last page. "Dark Rides" is the most unique fiction I've read in several years; not merely satisfying, the novel is electrifying. As "Dark Rides" was printed by a small publisher with little (to my knowledge) press attention, you will consider yourself lucky to have read this book