BOTTLE GROVE

Narrator Oliver Wyman reaches back to his Midwestern roots to give an affable, neighborly tone to this story of two newly married couples and their confederates who find themselves literally, figuratively, and ethically lost in San Francisco's tech boom of the 1990s. Wyman works well with the dispassionate immediacy of the author's present-tense style, which mixes magic realism, wandering asides, dark humor, and the author's intimate knowledge of his native city. The characters often return to Bottle Grove, their favorite dive, to hook up, scheme, and imbibe. When an old boyfriend comes up with the harebrained idea to kidnap his old flame's stepchild to settle an old debt, all their worlds begin to unravel. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2020]