Patrick deWitt's Ablutions is bleak and his minimalist style does nothing to dispel the bleakness – in fact it promotes it. There's endless dark vignettes, vile sexual encounters, and character studies of the bar patrons and his life as a bartender/bar back (it is never quite clear what he does, except drink a lot). His dismal relationships, or lack there of, dominate the plot – although in all fairness, there isn't any plot per say, as the subtitle of the book explains these are: Notes for a No...

I've said in other reviews that I could pretty much go the rest of my life without reading another novel set in a bar. And this one does have all the bar-book cliches: the surly bartender, the sad drunken teachers, the deteriorating regulars, the old lady that's really a man, the friendly homeless guy, the former child actor, the solo road trip. With all that said, I still really enjoyed it. The voice is rendered in a deadpan-poetic style that manages to feel fresh. The details all feel authenti...

I predict this book is going to rock a few worlds when it appears next month. deWitt, a new Portland author, writes convincingly, hypnotically, and often humorously in an odd (but freakishly natural-sounding) 2nd person narrative voice. This is lowlife gutter drunk bar life in a revealing light--a place where the bartender ("you") are more wretched than the customers, of course until you make your great escape. A superb little debut.

I got this book as a gift in 2012. I never bothered reading it because I didn't want to remind myself of a certain person who I thought would pass all to well with the main character, YOU. Happy to say I read the book last weekend and it turned out to be a healing experience although sightly hard as well. Those who know I think know...

3.5 stars. A sad, grim, dark short novel about a young barman who is an alcoholic. He wants to do something else and move away from his current way of life in Los Angeles. Leaving is his only chance of survival. He complies notes for a novel about the drinking establishment’s clientele. The clientele he describes are mostly drifters and down and outs. There are arguments every night and there is opportunity for casual sex.This novel is Patrick DeWitt’s first published novel.

It is going to be very difficult to explain this book so I might have to amend this review after I've had time to process - I only finished reading just now having started it this morning (what a lovely way to spend a sunday!).It is about a bartender with a drink and drugs problem observing others with drink and drugs problem. I mean we are talking serious problems here.The writing is lucid and his observations astute, but it is a sad, sad story.I am finding it almost impossible to articulate...

When I first left home, at nearly twenty-one, I got a job as a waitress in a bar in the city center of a large metropolis. During happy hour and a little beyond, the bar would be filled with the expected assortment of downtown types – everyone from suits to bums – but once the DJ would arrive at nine o'clock, the quiet regulars would file out and the young crowd would take over; loud and crazy and beautiful, every night of the week. The bar staff were also loud and crazy and beautiful, and like

This is a novel equally about hating work and loving booze. No. That isn't true. This is a novel that is about hating work and drinking booze and hating yourself. It belongs on your untidy shelf next to Under the Volcano, Leaving Las Vegas, Appointment in Samarra and Tender is the Night. IT is a fuzzy, high-energy migrane of a novel and that is part of its clouded brilliance.

This near-novel presents the reader with a barman observing the depressing lives of the alcoholics and drug addicts who come to the seedy bar where he works. Having worked in the bar for six years, the main character (only identified as a second person "you") has allowed himself to gradually adopt behaviors similar to the customers. This is far from a good thing. As he drinks himself into oblivion behind the bar, his life disintegrates; the most notable evidence of this is the break-up of his ma...

I used to really love boozy, druggy novels when I was a teenager, regularly devouring books by Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Hubert Selby Jnr. and Patrick Hamilton where the protagonists were either alcoholics, drug addicts or both. But that was when I was a teenager and my literary tastes have since changed. So I was surprised to find myself drawn into Patrick deWitt’s debut novel “Ablutions” which takes place almost entirely in a dismal Hollywood bar filled with deadbeats

I am not sure who this book is for. If it is for the sort of people it is written about, I am guessing they are too far gone to read the book. If it is intended as a cautionary tale for the people who are on the path of alcoholism, it's going to be a difficult, emotional read (made much worse by deWitt's decision to write in a second person narrative). If it is for anyone else, I can't see them enjoying the read. Ablutions Notes for a Novel is not entertaining. In fact, I'd say it is one of the

One of the dullest things you could probably ever find to read, but still not a complete waste of time. Ablutions follows a bartender, YOU, working in a degenerating Hollywood bar. You observe the patrons who are also rapidly degenerating, and reflect on your life, which is also falling apart. You find this book kind of boring and unimportant, but you keep reading because you want to know at what point the 2nd person perspective will make you actually feel something for the characters. You learn...

Patrick deWitt's first novel is truly a theatre of the absurd. In such finely tuned prose, deWitt gracefully synthesizes so many contradictions. It is a dark book with characters swimming in despair and on desolation row, blotting out their crises and lost dreams in booze and drugs. But in this cesspool of tragedy and nothingness is a book that so funny, so beautiful, and brutally revelatory of what may lie beneath the bowels of the human condition. This book is both real and surreal at the same...

This book is a doozy. It's one that I hesitate to give four stars, since I felt unclean after I read it, but dammit, I also loved it a lot. Brilliant writing, depravity, darkness, hilarity, all the good stuff. Also can be read in about two straight hours. No complaints.

This was an interesting book that, at first, had me wondering if I was going to be able to even finish it, but by the end, had completely won me over. It’s Bukowski-esque in tone, poetic in a different way, and quite dark, focusing mainly on an alcoholic barback whose life is continuously spiraling out of control. While it is not heavy on the plot, the dive bar and its denizens make for a colorful ride, and while the protagonist (if you can call him that) is kind of an ugly person, you can’t hel...

Quite similar to The Sisters Brothers in structure, but a bit less entertaining overall, whether because of the to relatable ugliness of the entire cast of characters or because the modern setting made the entire plot a bit to real, I'm still not sure of, but in either case it comes across as a lesser work in my experience.

A man walks into a bar. It's because he works there.Our un-named protagonist works in a dive somewhere in metropolitan California. He serves drinks to the wannabes, drunks and freaks. Sometimes he even charges them. Slowly he becomes very fond of a drink himself, and his life begins a slow downward spiral as his drinking gets out of hand. His marriage breaks down and he starts to steal from the bar.Moments of black humour and wry observations leaven the prose.Overall I couldn't quite engage with...

This is a bizarre little book about addiction, specifically the adverse impact of alcohol and drugs on the main character’s life. The unnamed protagonist works in a run-down Hollywood bar. He is lonely and miserable but clings to a small shred of hope that his life will improve. It is narrated in second person, focusing on the bar’s regulars. It is occasionally meandering and often disturbing, but somehow it works. It will appeal to those that enjoy unconventional stories containing dark humor.

Depressing. A despicable, disgusting and terrifying aspect of the human condition.

There are a few things that make me leery when reading a debut novel: 1) When one of the blurbs is by someone who is listed in the acknowledgments (Well that was nice of your friend/writing mentor/college roommate Dennis Cooper to say he loves this book very much); 2) When the book is, oh, say, about a bartender, and in the author's short bio on the back flap it says, for instance " ... Oregon, where he currently resides ... blah blah ... has worked as ... a bartender."Patrick DeWitt probably co...