Monday, May 23, 2016

Bullies: A Friendship by Alex Abramovich



Goodreads Summary

The powerful account of one writer's unlikely friendship with his childhood bully, now the president of a motorcycle club in one of America's most dangerous cities.

Once upon a time, Alex Abramovich and Trevor Latham were mortal enemies: miniature outlaws in a Long Island elementary school, perpetually at each other's throats. Then they lost track of each other. Decades later, when they met again, Abramovich was a writer and Latham had become President of the East Bay Rats, a motorcycle club in Oakland.

In 2010, Abramovich moved to California to immerse himself in Latham's world - one of fight clubs, booze-filled nights, and beat-downs on the city's streets. But dangerous, dysfunctional Oakland was also becoming one of America's most rapidly gentrifying cities, and the questions Abramovich had arrived with were thrown into brutal relief: How do we live with the burden of violence? How do we overcome it? Do we overcome it?

As Trevor, the Rats, and the city they live in careen between crises and moments of renaissance, Abramovich explores issues of friendship, family, history, and destiny - and looks at what happens when those things fail. Bullies is at once a vivid, visceral narrative of an unusual friendship and an incisive portrait of a beautiful, terrible city.

My Thoughts

I didn’t particularly enjoy this book.  It wasn’t necessarily bad, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, I guess.  When I read the description of this book I was intrigued.  I ended up a bit disappointed, though, because there really wasn’t enough about their actual friendship.  It started as though that’s what the entire book would be about but towards the middle we kind of lost that storyline.  It was brought back together in the end but it wasn’t enough to make me like the book. There was some interesting information about the history of Oakland and things like that but it just wasn’t what I was expecting to read about.

I didn’t completely hate it, but I really didn’t love it.  I don’t think I can even say that I liked it.  That makes me sad… I want to be able to love all books.  This didn’t receive a great rating from me.  Sorry


*Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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