Evening's Empire

I loved this book. Bill Flanagan combines the history of the Ravons, a fictional minor British rock group, with actual musicians, names and places to create a compelling saga of the popular music business spanning the last forty-five years. I downloaded the book to my Kindle for a European vacation read and could not put it down. Flanagan gets it so right each and every time. Dirty Water by the Standells? The quintessential Boston anthem! Flanagan also has a wise perspective on the past and slips in surprisingly philosophical comments about life, death, and the pursuit and loss of love.

Couldn't put this down. Bill Flanagan does a great job of weaving this fictional band into the tapestry and folklore of rock'n'roll. I'm not going to pretend that it's the best novel ever written, but it's certainly a very entertaining read, with many dead-on observations about music business, pop culture, and stardom in general. And it's not strictly for music geeks, either: my wife laughed out loud at several passages I read to her. (The video shoot involving a talking "dummy" is priceless.) By the end of the book, you might fool yourself into believing that the Ravons were a real band. I certainly wouldn't mind hearing Mary vs. Mary or The Voodoo Doll. I can almost imagine what these songs sound like...

I get to read (and write) a lot. This is the best book for me in several years. I would rank it in the same category as Flicker by Theodore Roszak and Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt. A completely compelling read for people who grew up with Rock 'n' Roll. I grieved mightily at the end of this book. I've read all of Michael Connolly's books, and Flanagan's work here is definitely more of a page turner than anyone of those, save, perhaps, The Poet. Evening's Empire is the only product outside of specific songs and people that I have ever known Bob Dylan to recommend. If you are at all a member of the 60s, you owe it to yourself to spend at least an hour with this novel.

I ditched Ken Follet's "Jackdaws" midway for Evening's Empire and I am so glad I did. I absolutely loved and thoroughly enjoyed every page of Evening's Empire. Bill Flanagan is a wonderful storyteller. This book was everything I had been looking for and had been disappointed in trying to find over the last few years of browsing the new releases at the bookstore. I picked it up, read the front flap, was reminded too much of my own experience with rock musicians and put it back down only to be haunted by it's presence each time I passed it by. It was knocking at my door. I finally bought it as my self-assigned February book-of-the-month (a New Year's Resolution...I have a bad habit of not finishing them and have imposed limits on my book imbibing without finishing), ditched Follet's Jackdaws sans guilt (a gift) and I finished it in a week. I went from begrudging Jackdaws to being enthralled by Evening's Emmpire. Flanagan moves effortlessly and seamlessly through vast blocks of time story by story. It's so well written I would have sworn it could have actually happened and he was simply writing a memoir as fiction. I plan to read his other two books now and am looking forward to more from Flanagan in the future. Thank you, Bill Flanagan, for a wonderful read, a happy escape into another world, and the yearning for more. Sincerely, Your Newest Fan.

This is an intelligent and "important" novel that chronicles the life and times of rock music from the 1960s to the present through the amazing experiences of a band manager and, especially, through the superb mind and writing ability of Bill Flanagan. (Congrats to you, Mr. Flanagan!) If you want a sweeping epic, filled with drugs, sex, rock and roll -- and incredible story-telling -- laced with what certainly sounds like professional insight, then this will be a page-turning delight. The characters seem genuine, their motivations, actions, and reactions believable, the plot moves along rapidly, and you just want it all to continue. Once in a while I read what I feel is truly a great book -- this one makes my short list. I think you'll feel lucky to have read it.