Ride Around Shining lays claim to being an interesting novel on its own terms, offering some fresh takes on those big American topics of race, class, manhood and meritocracy…a rousing affirmation of American possibility.” — Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air with Terry Gross
“Many a white guy has felt that the answers to his lameass and goofy existence might be found in making his life ‘blacker.’ Chris Leslie-Hynan’s brilliant debut is the story of one such paleface on the loose.” — Will Blythe, author of To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever
“Ride Around Shining is a West Coast, twenty-first-century Gatsby, warped through the lenses of race and class, and similarly obsessed with those very American anxieties of money, ambition and authenticity. This is the best and one of the bravest novels I’ve read in years.” — Benjamin Hale, author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
“R.A.S. is brilliant. Sure, it’s about ballers and their chauffeurs, and fame and wealth and celebrity and race. But its subversive soul is interested only in one thing: the hunger, both yours and mine, to swallow the world whole. It feels like an instant classic.” — Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
“Ride Around Shining is a searing debut—simultaneously poignant and provocative, tender and deeply unnerving. With mordant wit and exquisite sensitivity, Chris Leslie-Hynan illuminates the overlapping fault lines of race and class, aspiration and invention, borrowed nostalgia and dubious desire.” — Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel
“It’s hard to believe Ride Around Shining exists…it’s a provocative, bracing, and totally singular look at how white entitlement can fester in the face of black accomplishment.” — Portland Mercury
“A smart, sad, funny, beautifully voiced, and precisely detailed investigation of the particularly American collision of race, sex, money, and vicariousness.” — David Shields, author of Black Planet
Ride Around Shining is a searing debut—simultaneously poignant and provocative, tender and deeply unnerving. With mordant wit and exquisite sensitivity, Chris Leslie-Hynan illuminates the overlapping fault lines of race and class, aspiration and invention, borrowed nostalgia and dubious desire.
A smart, sad, funny, beautifully voiced, and precisely detailed investigation of the particularly American collision of race, sex, money, and vicariousness.
Ride Around Shining is a West Coast, twenty-first-century Gatsby, warped through the lenses of race and class, and similarly obsessed with those very American anxieties of money, ambition and authenticity. This is the best and one of the bravest novels I’ve read in years.
Ride Around Shining lays claim to being an interesting novel on its own terms, offering some fresh takes on those big American topics of race, class, manhood and meritocracy…a rousing affirmation of American possibility.
It’s hard to believe Ride Around Shining exists…it’s a provocative, bracing, and totally singular look at how white entitlement can fester in the face of black accomplishment.
R.A.S. is brilliant. Sure, it’s about ballers and their chauffeurs, and fame and wealth and celebrity and race. But its subversive soul is interested only in one thing: the hunger, both yours and mine, to swallow the world whole. It feels like an instant classic.
Many a white guy has felt that the answers to his lameass and goofy existence might be found in making his life ‘blacker.’ Chris Leslie-Hynan’s brilliant debut is the story of one such paleface on the loose.
2014-05-22
A young man’s job chauffeuring an NBA star turns out to involve carrying more baggage than he expected—racial, romantic and otherwise.Jess, the narrator of Leslie-Hynan’s debut, has stumbled into an inner sanctum of sports celebrity: Through some unlikely coincidences, he’s become the personal driver for Calyph, a player for the Portland Trail Blazers. The bling-y external trappings of the job are shallow, if not actively problematic: In the first chapter, Jess knocks over an ice sculpture at Calyph’s rented mansion that injures his boss’s knee. But Jess dwells more on the internal dynamics, which offer rich territory for a novelist. Jess is a white man in a black milieu, and Leslie-Hynan has an ear for baller slang and an eye for the subtle power plays that come with a wealthy man and the servant who knows the household’s secrets. Further complicating matters is Calyph’s white wife, Antonia, who begins a romantic push and pull with Jess. There are unmistakable echoes of Othello here, as well as The Great Gatsby, down to a climactic car wreck in the closing pages. But those familiar antecedents make this novel feel more like a thought experiment than the provocative look into a subculture that it’s meant to be. Jess’ banter with Calyph and his entourage has energy and humor, and intermittent moments capture Calyph’s heavy-hangs-the-crown temperament, his recognition that he’s famous and talented but not forever. Those moments of close observation never cohere, though, into a strong story that also wants to pack in plenty of romantic parrying and musings on race. Leslie-Hynan’s unmistakable talents as a stylist are undermined by a protagonist who’s drably passive (“a clumsy man of inaction”) for much of the novel.To extend the basketball metaphor, Leslie-Hynan is generally strong in the paint but hasn’t yet developed the stamina for four quarters.
