Ride

Ride possesses an unnerving air of autofiction that's heartbreaking and authentic at the same time. This searing novel is a dizzying spiral of desperation set in the early 2000s in southern Ontario. High school is over, an ex-girlfriend is pregnant, and Troy Brinkman is losing control. Having just moved out of his parent's home, Troy enters a landscape of limitless moral entropy where everybody drinks copious amounts of alcohol, snorts mountains of cocaine, and swallows as many Ecstasy pills as they can get their hands on.

When he's not seething for his next high, Troy cruises parties, strip-clubs, and bars for action in a desperate attempt to avoid coming to terms with his best friend's attempted suicide. In this binge-life, Troy recognizes his impending doom and tries to renew feelings for his ex-girlfriend, Danielle, his sole through-line that connects Troy to who he was before his habits became him. It's this struggle which threatens to get the better of, consume, and ultimately destroy his dreams.

A bold exploration of the blurred line between nihilism and loneliness, pleasure and addiction, Ride offers a exhilarating, devastating portrait of a young man's pursuit of his own kind of freedom. It is a striking deluge of longing, anxiety, ego, identity, and love. As provocative as it is moving, as profane as it is artful, Andrew Lafleche's Ride illuminates the warring forces of power, desire, intimacy, and fear, and exposes the raw nerve of our yearning to be loved on our own terms. This is coming of age at the end of the world.