One Man's Opinion: SLOW DOWN by LEE MATTHEW GOLDBERG

"God, Noah, stop reading too much into everything. I do Fast all the time, and look at me, I'm fine. The world is made up of strong people and weak ones, and if some of those weak people have to go to make more room for the strong, then so be it."

Not long not until Lee Matthew Goldberg's The Ancestor (US) is released. It's a real tour de force and I wholeheartedly recommend that you get yourself a copy and indulge yourself, not matter what your usual genre choice. I thought I'd warm up for the big day by reading Slow Down to get a sense of the author's earlier work. 

Slow Down (US) uses the familiar noir structure of being told in retrospect by the protagonist, in this case one Noah Spaeth. He's struggling to meet a deadline to produce a biography that will form the basis of a book and a film. At the last minute, a ghost writer turns up to rescue him from his inability to settle to work and from that point we step into his past, beginning with the path that introduced him to film director Dominic Bambach. It turns out that the love of Spaeth's life is currently Bambach's mistress and he's soon seduced by the director's desire to find a fresh writer untainted by the industry. As Spaeth sets out to become the next big thing, he finds huge piles of bizarre at every turn.

There's a new drug on the scene. Something called Fast. Not only has it taken off among New York's cool set, it's allowed it's creator, a certain maverick film director, to capture the lives of a number of would-be stars via a yellow sun tattooed containing heavy doses of the drug onto their backs. Though the actors are happy to prostitute themselves to find their big break, it's Spaeth who is prepared to sell his soul. His goal is to become known by everyone. To have his name at the tip of the world's lips. The success might fill the hole left by his absentee parents, to mend his broken heart or to bring energy to the stale and sterile life of his rich family who have nothing to do other than to seek fun. 

In order to achieve his goals, Spaeth feels he has to outdo his mentor. This means he has to shed all inhibitions and must be prepared to steal, exploit, cheat, manipulate and indulge in the cold and extreme ways. Empathy, compassion and concern are all binned. Real life and fiction blur and overlap. Identity becomes fluid and interchangeable. The web of interplay becomes dangerous as Spaeth attempts to work out the motivations of all the other ruthless bastards around him to fathom which side will come out on top. Eventually he chooses the most dangerous of them all as a superbly crafted femme fatale lays out a path before him and paves it with the promise of gold. 

There's a lot going on in this novel. Fact fuels fiction and vice versa. Tension and drama come from all angles, whether it be from Spaeth's relationships, extreme movie-making techniques or the sticky web into which he is lured. As the plot thickened, my favourite setting throughout came in the form of Spaeth's domestic life where he interacts with his brother, sister and maid. This provides a great contrast to the action and as a counterpoint illustrates from what a great height he has fallen. 

Writing about the avant-garde cinema and its creators contains the inherent danger that the fictitious pretensions may taint a story, but Lee Matthew Goldberg manages to avoid such potential pitfalls with some skill while still managing to point out the shallow and hollow desperations of those striving for success for its own sake. 

Slow Down is a tense and thought-provoking read and it's one that's well worth getting hold of. If, however, you're pennies are few and you need something to satisfy whatever reading needs you have right now, I'll point you in the direction of The Ancestor instead. Both books are original, well-written and compelling, it's just that the upcoming release reaches deeper and further and has a set of characters that inspire a wider range of emotional response. Ideally, of course, you should treat yourself to a copy of both. In that way you'll be royally entertained and supporting both the author and one of the best independent publishers around.