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Basement of Wolves

by Daniel Allen Cox

In this dark, twisted look at Hollywood celebrity, author Daniel Allen Cox shows us the seedy underbelly of the movie industry through the eyes of actor Michael-David. Ruined by fame and the banality of mainstream movies, and as paranoid as they come, Michael-David goes AWOL after a film role takes a disturbing turn during shooting.

Cox’s portrait of his protagonist is expertly rendered, making the reader squirm in discomfort as a result of being placed so squarely inside Michael-David’s mind. His paranoia is all-consuming, from stressing about not getting good roles or performing poorly in the roles he does get to worrying about his age: “At forty, I was too old to be hip, but too young to be distinguished. To be an actor between the ages of forty and forty-four in the film industry is to be a corpse walking through a cemetery, grasping at whatever script pages you can clutch in your zombie hands.”

Cox cleverly examines this period in Michael-David’s life while playing around with the limits of a first-person narrator. To fill the reader in on what’s happening in scenes where he isn’t present, Michael-David frequently imagines what might be occurring. Although the technique is initially difficult to swallow, it does lend depth to the story, and to its protagonist. Michael-David’s paranoia is pervasive enough that it seems believable  he would fabricate detailed storylines about other people in his life. In doing so, Michael-David morphs from actor into director, controlling the actions of key players in his story.

The novel is often self-referential. Sometimes, this works surprisingly well, but at other times – in both the novel Michael-David inhabits and the film he is working on – Cox’s “fiction imitating fiction” doesn’t gel.

 

Reviewer: Suzanne Gardner

Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

DETAILS

Price: $15.95

Page Count: 152 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-55152-446-7

Released: May

Issue Date: 2012-5

Categories: Fiction: Novels