Fast Eddie, King of the Bees

August 6, 2001
A young street hustler takes a bizarre ride from rags to riches in this uneven debut novel, which posits a future in which the Northeast lies in virtual ruin, the gap between rich and poor having widened so deeply that most public services and institutions have completely broken down. Fast Eddie is a Boston orphan who makes his way through the rubble by picking pockets until he's plucked from urban life and taken to Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey, where a rich ex-plumber turned sewer magnate Pauly Corrente and his comely, buxom wife Merry suddenly claim him as their long lost son. The couple is more than prepared to take care of Eddie's minimal material needs, but Eddie is quickly bored by Jersey life, and he's more than a little disturbed by Merry's romantic advances. After taking as much as he can stand, he runs away to become a bus driver, spiriting tourists and travelers up and down I-95 until he inadvertently finds himself in a very strange battle with a woman fronting an attack on the underground Boston city called Digtown. After winning the encounter, Eddie is proclaimed a hero in the underground town and quickly made its mayor, a role that brings him into conflict with the local crime kingpin, an old street rival named Apple Jack. Arellano keeps the action moving toward a final confrontation, but there's plenty of overwriting and not much rhyme or reason to Eddie's adventures, and Arellano's futuristic vision isn't nearly imaginative enough to add to the tale. The result is an occasionally entertaining but decidedly flawed parody of the age-old story of an orphan searching for his parents. B&w illus. by Marek Bennett.

August 1, 2001
The story of Oedipus underlies Arellano's first print novel (he has also written an online work), but the main story here is the author's style, which takes its cue from William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Jack Kerouac, and Tom Robbins. This may be the first postapocalyptic novel in which the apocalypse was created by a public works project, Boston's Big Dig, which is currently in its second decade. The eponymous Eddie, believing himself to be an orphan, joins a band of pickpockets. He then moves to New Jersey with a couple he claims are his parents, who turn out not to be his real parents. He spends six years on the road driving a bus between gambling resorts until his 21st birthday, when he accidentally kills Levis the King. In the underground Dig City, a catacomb metropolis under the former Big Dig, he beds Levis's former wife, Jocy, with whom he has four children. The question of whether or not Levis and Jocy were his real parents further complicates Eddie's lifelong confusion about his lineage. Misdirection and game theory flesh out this funny and surprising book. Recommended for literary collections. Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.