Gone to the Wolves

December 1, 2022

Outsiders in 1980s Florida for their devotion to heavy metal, Kip, Kira, and Leslie travel to Los Angeles, seeking a place where they might belong. They don't find it, and Kip and Leslie soon veer away from Kira as she veers toward heavy metal's depths. Then Kira disappears on a birthday trip to Europe, and when her friends finally discover what happened, they must travel worldwide to find her. From Granta Best of Young American Novelists Wray (Godsend); with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 27, 2023
Wray (Lowboy) returns with a masterly opus of Florida metalheads. Kip Norvald, Leslie Z, and Kira Carson bond as teens in the late 1980s during a drunken escapade that involves, among other things, a dude strapping himself to skis on the roof of an off-roading truck. Having survived the mischief, the three set out in search of something true. They find it in the death metal scene, where bands like Death, Morbid Angel, and Cannibal Corpse are flourishing. As Kira puts it: “That’s what metal is for. It’s a flamethrower, Norvald. It burns all the bullshit away.” After high school, the trio are pulled in different directions. Leslie Z, the flamboyant, queer ringleader, struggles with heroin addiction, Kira tends bar at the Rainbow Room in Los Angeles, and Kip becomes a rock critic. Kip and Leslie reunite in 1990 to find Kira, who has since moved to Norway and been taken in by a black metal cult. Wray writes about music with the enthusiasm of a fan and the precision of a critic, packing the pages with spot-on details and cannily capturing the allure of extreme music. The pages of this anthem are as uncompromising as the music they depict. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

April 1, 2023
Three misfits find their friendship tested in the 1980s and '90s metal scenes. Wray's sixth novel centers on Kip, a White kid who, in 1987, is 16 and has moved from his broken home in Tallahassee, Florida, to live with his grandmother on the state's Gulf Coast. Soon he befriends Leslie, a Black bisexual man with a passion for heavy metal, and Kira, a hard-nosed young White woman for whom metal concerts are an escape hatch from her impoverished, abusive home. The bands they love--"downright life-affirming in their bleakness"--become important enough to build a life around in the years to come. In time they head for LA just as its glam-metal scene has reached its zenith. (In one funny scene, Kip lectures M�tley Cr�e's inebriated lead singer about his artistic failures.) Kip becomes an in-demand writer for metal magazines, and Kira tends bar at a popular club, but Leslie starts to fall through the cracks and uses heroin. And once Kira grows entangled in the Norwegian black metal scene, where rumors of church burnings and ritual murders abound, everyone's lives become more troubled. Wray deftly captures teenage alienation, the precarity of adolescence, and the way multiple subgenres of metal can provide solace, be it via glitzy fantasy or doomy angst. That is, so long as life doesn't try to imitate art: The closing section, set in Norway, features set pieces that make the novel as much a horror story as a bildungsroman. And though the storytelling drags in places, Wray is gifted at capturing the dynamics of difficult friendships, as Kip's relationships with Kira and Leslie snap and reknit over money, addiction, and music. Metal might offer a form of salvation, but the story turns on the commitments the three make to each other when the music is off. A giddy, harrowing, manic, and often dark coming-of-age tale.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
Kip Norvald is indifferent to the nuances of heavy metal. So what if it "sounded like someone trying to sing a nursery rhyme while being burned at the stake?" It helps the lonely teenager in conservative 1980s Venice, Florida, to bond with classmate Leslie Vogler and Kira Carson, a recent graduate of Venice High. Leslie's black skin and bisexuality make him an easy target for harassment, while Kira struggles with an abusive family. Immersing themselves deeper in the metal scene, the friends decide to reboot their lives in L.A. Not surprisingly, the past is not that easily shed. When Kira travels to Europe, she gets tugged into the darker elements of heavy metal, testing the trio's friendship. The real-life arson attacks against Norway's old wooden churches by heavy metal groups provide background for the chapters set in Europe. The portions set in California drag a bit, and at times the heavy metal soundtrack threatens to drown out the plot. Nevertheless, Wray's (The Lost Time Accidents, 2016) edgy prose--people are "sardine-canned" into a dance club--is as crisp as ever, resulting in a melodious exploration of the succor that music and fan groups can provide, especially to rudderless teens desperate to find anchor anywhere.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2023

In this latest from Berlin Prize winner Wray (Godsend), three heavy-metal fans become fast friends in a Florida high school in the late 1980s. Kira is a lifelong Floridian, Kip has moved in with his grandmother after being abandoned by his drug-addicted mother, and Leslie is a gay Black man adopted by a white family. After graduating, the three head to Los Angeles, where Kip writes for music publications, Kira works at a club frequented by metal bands, and Leslie insinuates himself in the metal scene before overdosing and returning to Florida. Ultimately, Kip and Kira become lovers and take an extended trip to Europe until she comes under the spell of a Norwegian metal band and the death cult around them and leaves him to join them in Norway. Back in LA a few years later, Kip receives a visit from Interpol, who are investigating Kira's disappearance. He reunites with Leslie, and the pair embark on a dangerous trip deep into the Norwegian forest to search for Kira--who may or may not still be alive. VERDICT Wray deftly explores late adolescence with its roller-coaster intensity of friendship and the music that binds everything together, in this case heavy metal and its mythological fantasies, which here become all too darkly real.--Lawrence Rungren

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