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 THIS
FEELS LIKE A RIOT LOOKS by Kilian Betlach (Mutiny
Pressings) Fiction, 2005. 324 pages. In one sense this is the story of
pulsating, untamed youth. 20 year old Mark lives in the
Ft.
Lauderdale
of 1997 and fronts a local punk band that seems like it’s really
starting to take off. He also writes a popular independent weekly column
and is considered a main man when it comes to the Scene. Mark lives with
his band mate and best pal Sean, and despite a semi-recent, somewhat
devastating breakup with his last
elusively-fascinating-yet-ultimately-shallow-seeming girlfriend, life
should still be generally good, right?
Wrong. No matter how much potential his life seems to have, Mark
becomes more and more distant from his daily surroundings. The Scene,
which Mark basically broke with his upper-middle class family to embrace
wholeheartedly a few years earlier, just ain’t what it seemed like it
always would be. Mark’s innate intelligence and ability to really FEEL
things drive him to a situation where there’s ultimately no turning
back. And this brings us to the major theme of this tale, which finds Mark
essentially confronted with the choice of betraying someone he loves or,
when it’s all said and done, betraying himself (at least the part of
himself defined by his unbridled desire to experience the best, most pure
reason to be alive). If
you’ve ever been even remotely in this situation, you’ll appreciate
Kilian Betlach’s mastery at conveying this quandary. You’ll also love
the way he has things play out. No easy answers here, and Kilian ain’t
trying to give you a cheap solution anyhow. Fuckin’ powerful good stuff.
And throughout This Feels
Like A Riot Looks, Betlach is great at portraying the gritty,
all-or-nothing day to day life of the young band member/scenester. The
painful, broke, hungover mornings that become nights of promise with old
friends, even when it turns into the same old/same old yet still end up
vibrantly are fun as hell to read (assuming hell is somehow a fun place,
of course). I enjoyed the fuck out of this book. –Ben Hunter
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