Looking for Mo

3.6/5 ( ratings)

A "fresh, funny first novel" "," "Looking For Mo" has garnered rave reviews from critics and readers alike, echoing the success of Daniel Duane's previous book, "Caught Inside." This time Duane combines the thrill of adventure writing "a la" Jon Krakauer with a sly satire of pop culture comparable to Douglas Coupland's "Generation X," and folds them into a wry and memorable story of one man's search for truth on the sheer rock face of Yosemite's El Capitan. Raymond Connelly, a San Francisco would-be writer, is still living uneasily with his failure to climb "The Captain" with his childhood friend and alter ego, Mo Lehrman. As he circumnavigates his way through life on the edges of West Coast counterculture, trying to live like Mo's stories, which are more real than life itself, Ray lifts the best of those tales for his own book. But when he is accused of plagiarism, Ray suffers an attack of conscience, and sets off in search of Mo -- to explain, and to make good by finishing their shared climb.

From the San Francisco performance-art world to a psychedelic vision at a Grateful Dead show, Ray's quest for self-discovery is both hilarious and emotionally fraught, climaxing in two men's true-to-life climb up the sheer slope of "The Captain." "Looking For Mo" is a moving, resonant exploration of the tenuous foundations of friendship and an investigation of the explosive power of storytelling.