Junkie Love

Junkie Love

"A voice filled with sincerity, salvation, and splendor. A voice as stark, unforgiving, and mesmerizing as blood backing into the needle." ~ J.A. Kazimer, The Ampersand Review

From the cow fields of Connecticut to the streets of San Francisco, Joe Cliffordâ€™s JUNKIE LOVE traverses the lost highways of America, down the rocky roads of mental illness to the dead ends of addiction. Based on Cliffordâ€™s own harrowing experience with drugs as a rock â€™nâ€™ roll wannabe in the 1990s, the book draws on the best of Kerouac & the Beats, injecting a heavy dose of pulp fiction as it threads a rollicking narrative through a doomed love triangle, lit up by the many strange characters he meets along the way. Part road story, part resurrection tale, Junkie Love finds a way to laugh in oneâ€™s darkest hour, while never abandoning its heart in search of a home.

JUNKIE LOVE by Joe Clifford is an original ride through the down-and-dirty underside of the drug and music scene, inspired and propelled by Jack Kerouacâ€™s youthful dreams of an American nirvana, translated to a later, darker generation. Clifford is its passionate spokesman.

"Joe Cliffordâ€™s Junkie Love portrays high-heeled heroin amour, beautiful and vicious, full of front seat hot sex and brutal cop raids, secret rehab gropes and smack-fueled crime sprees. In prose that speeds like a stolen car, Clifford does for opiated romance what Michael Herr did for war and F.X. Toole for prize fights: brings mind-blowing news from hells beyond imagining." - Alan Kaufman, author of Jew Boy and The Outlaw Bible of American Literature

"No one writes this good the first time out, do they? Joe Cliffordâ€™s Junkie Love is a literary achievement of the first order. Junkie Love is both harrowing and haunting, hypnotic and hilarious. Clifford can flat-out tell a story. Heâ€™s savvy, insightful, and fearless. Trust me, hereâ€™s a world thatâ€™s more vivid, unnerving, and compelling than the one youâ€™re living in, written with the exhilaration and abandon of an improbable survivor." - John Dufresne, author of Requiem, Mass (a People magazineâ€™s Book Pick of the Week)

"Joe Clifford reminds us that even in the most punishing circumstances, the human heart doesnâ€™t just struggle or abide, it points the way home. Junkie Love is a savage, funny, ravishing gift of a book, strangely gentle and beautifully strange. Like Jimmy Santiago Bacaâ€™s A Place to Stand, it reveals that man in extremis is the man in the mirror, and that our own humanity resides precisely in the willingness to see the irreparable fault lines in our own souls, to witness despite the impenetrable darkness: to love. All men should be as strong and caringâ€”and yes, flawedâ€”as Joe Clifford; all books should be this wicked and mesmerizing and just plain good." - David Corbett, Author of Blood of Paradise and Do They Know Iâ€™m Running?

"At turns tender, at turns scalding, Joe Cliffordâ€™s Junkie Love is a raw, articulate, poignant, comic and steely-eyed look into the ravages and ravishments of being a heroin addict in San Francisco at the end of the millennium. Itâ€™s an edgy coming-of-age tale of survival and redemption refracted trough the haze of rock â€™nâ€™ roll and the noir of addiction, always true to the impulse, however warped, humans have to seek out love and companionship in spite of the depravity of their situation. An entire vivid underworldâ€”populated with dealers and the DEA, dope fiends and their loversâ€”crystallizes and crackles in the blue flame of Cliffordâ€™s prose. Look out Bill Burroughs, move over Irvine Welsh, make way Jim Carroll, youâ€™ve got company!" - Ravi Shankar, Executive Director of Drunken Boat and author/editor of five collections of poetry

"Joe Clifford casts a cold, clear eye on the brutal landscape of addiction and those who populate it. This is a tough, authoritative work, crackling with tension, oozing dread." - Les Standiford, author of Last Train to Paradise

Country	USA
Author	Joe Clifford
Binding	Kindle Edition
Format	Kindle eBook
IsAdultProduct
Label	Battered Suitcase Press
Manufacturer	Battered Suitcase Press
NumberOfPages	218
PublicationDate	2013-04-05
Publisher	Battered Suitcase Press
ReleaseDate	2013-04-05
Studio	Battered Suitcase Press

You might also like...