Ablutions, Notes for a NovelAblutions, Notes for a Novel
Working at a decaying Hollywood bar while making notes for the novel he hopes to write, a bartender uncovers the secrets and motives of his troubled patrons, only to be drawn into the alcoholic oblivion that affects his customers, losing his wife, his goals, and himself in the process, until he comes up with a terrible way to break free of his life.
In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with the cast of variously pathological regulars.
But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to serve himself more often than his customers, and the moments he lives outside the bar become more and more painful: he loses his wife, his way, himself. Trapped by his habits and his loneliness, he realizes he will not survive if he doesn't break free. And so he hatches a terrible, necessary plan of escape and his only chance for redemption.
Step into Ablutions and step behind the bar, below rock bottom, and beyond the everyday take on storytelling for a brilliant, new twist on the classic tale of addiction and its consequences.
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- Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
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