East Bay Grease

East Bay Grease allows us to enter a world that we knew existed, but were afraid to think about. The story is a wake-up call; it makes you realize just how good you have it and that things are not as bad as it seems. It makes you appreciate the things you have and don't have. It makes you appreciate your family, your loved ones, and to just really appreciate life in general. T-Bird is an inspiration for us all; he represents the do'ers in the world, and he will not stop until he finds what he's looking for. East Bay Grease is the type of novel that is uplifting to your soul. The story represents all walks of life and it reminds us that we are all different...but the same. Different authors mean stories and experiences. It's refreshing to finally read a story that is realistic,and doesn't just tell us what we want to hear. Williamson has guts, and is not afraid to tell it like it is. We should congratualte him for being so honest. Mark my words, it will be in Cliff Notes in the near future.

I read East Bay Grease with growing admiration for the language, courage and honesty. By the time I finished the book, I had tremendous respect for the writer. That he lived through the world he describes is a triumph. That he subsequently wrote such an eloquent novel is a testament to the power of art, and to Mr. Williamson as an artist.

Reading East Bay Grease is like eating Ben and Jerry's icecream with added ground up motorcycle parts. Your mouth runs with blood and saliva. The guy gets to you short and sharp and leaves you dangling, twisting, laughing.

Jack London appears in this book, and it's no wonder. The writer Eric Miles Williamson is from Oakland, California, Jack's old neighborhood. The writer lived a life as hard and amazing as Jack's. This writer, in my view, gets down with the grease monkeys and the working people of America who eat fast food with crud under their fingernails. Just read Williamson's own comments o n this web page, and you feel the sting of the whipping his wannabe Hell's Angel mom inflicted on him. That same sting is on every page of this remarkable novel, all of it from the darkness Williamson's hero T-Bird Murphy must overcome to find redemption blowing a trumpet in a whacky jazz band.

Unlike a lot of fiction in which characters think a lot, do nothing, and bore us to tears, East Bay Grease is that rare literary novel in which there is action for the characters and the readers to think about.This book takes the coming of age novel to places it doesn't usually go - like the working-class neighborhoods of Oakland. There are fights, deaths, drunkenness and life from one paycheck to the next. Somehow Williamson finds humor as well as pain in all this. I found myself laughing out loud as I read passages to myself and laughing again as I read them to friends over the telephone.This book comes a lot closer to daily life, where endurance and honor are the only assets most people hold, than tepid novels in which characters ponder their well-cushioned mid-life crises in the Berkshires or the Hamptons. East Bay Grease addresses what most of us call "real life" and turns its rough energy into literature.