Garden State
Winner of the Pushcart Press`s Tenth Annual Editors` Book Award, Garden State is a brilliant and uncompromising look at life in what came to be known as Generation X -- those years just after college, when life is alternately exhilarating, humiliating, and just plain confusing. Haledon, New Jersey, is a suburb in eclipse. On the hills above the mid-Atlantic sprawl, the kids are looking for something to do. Four disaffected twentysomethings -- Alice Smail, one-time guitar player and unemployed short-order cook; Dennis Francis, painter and plumber; Max Crick, dealer in controlled substances; and Nails Pennebaker, night watchman -- pass the time playing in garage bands, drinking in seedy bars, and doing drugs, until real life finally shakes them from their stupor. Garden State is a moving novel about the lyricism of real life and the beauty of responsibility. With a new afterword by the author, it is both the first and the most lasting novel about a generation.

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