In Search of Lost Everything
Xandan Gulley reviews Brendan Gillen's STATIC.
Brendan Gillen’s debut novel, Static, explores the libertine aesthetics of a life where unemployment, music, booze, family, hopeless dreams, homelessness and failure are woven into a diary of self-theocracy and self-pity. An alternate title might be Story of My Life 101. On the other hand, the title suits the story, which centers on emotional and existential stasis, desperation for change in a life that has become inert and unmoving. Static will make you question your life, purpose, and future. You’ll either wanna make a last ditch effort to follow your dreams or at the very least count your blessings and luck. You may even have an epiphany in which you decide to stop running or hiding from life and face the reality that hovers over the horizon. With a melancholic motif that unveils hidden aspirations, Static will motivate you to not give up on yourself no matter the circumstances. This novel is a paradigm of solace for all realists, pacifists, pessimists, leftists, optimists, socialists, dreamers, idealists and conservatives who are desperate, lonely, hungry, suffering, lost, or hurting.
A mind-blowing narrative with a poignant, rhythmic beat, Static flows like keys on a piano from a melodramatic summit to a soul-baring expedition in search of purpose. The protagonist, Paul, a self-conscious diligent failure who is adamant in pursuing his dreams, is a lost soul in search of something but finding nothing. Spending time on the page with him makes you question your livelihood and self worth. The common life woes he deal with steadily intensify—his girlfriend breaks up with him, his parents are jobless, in debt, and forced to sell their house. He’s broke, abandoned and betrayed by his so-called best friend who steals his music and dreams, working a dead-end job making peanuts, unable to pay his rent. He has to steal food daily just so he can eat. Life for Paul sucks! But—he has dreams, and he has talent. That’s his saving grace. So when Paul hits rock bottom and realizes that he’s nothing but a disappointment to his family, friends, and self, he has no choice but to embark on an introspective journey to find his muse. By any means necessary he’s determined for his band to make it in the industry, pay off his parents’ debt and finally make them proud, reconnect with his girlfriend and confess his love, and possibly also get revenge on his backstabbing ex-best friend. A journey of a lifetime.
I literally found myself living vicariously through Paul. Dealing with the stresses of life that make you float in the abyss of the unknown, where living from paycheck to paycheck, shame, embarrassment, failure, defeat and hopelessness try to beat you down at every turn and you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. When the subconscious whispers to the invisible barriers of impedance and we realize that our self is our worst enemy. The doubts, fears, and insecurities that leave us stuck asking a million rhetorical questions. This book made me ponder all that and more, particularly asking myself: Why do we lie to ourselves in the midst of our own self-induced troubles? Where do we start when our dreams have been shattered, hearts ripped out of our chests, worlds fallen apart, and everybody looks at us like we’re losers? But also, how it’s also just not that deep. It’s hard to accept sometimes that life be life-ing, and it is what it is.
Sometimes the darkness is therapeutic to our souls because it gives us that push to go in search of the light.
Reading this book made me laugh, frown, reminisce, and daydream as each page pulled me into an allure of regrets and what ifs. I’ve always known that we must play the cards we’re dealt, even if it’s a shitty hand. We have to make do surfing the opaque waves with no direction to navigate in the darkness. But all things considered, when the darkness is our own regret, shame, incompetence, and failure, and when we’re at our lowest point, that’s usually when we truly find ourselves, or at least find things we didn’t know were there or never acknowledged. Sometimes the darkness is therapeutic to our souls because it gives us that push to go in search of the light.
As an incarcerated person, I personally enjoyed this novel because I could deeply relate to Paul and his situation. Reading this book made me wish I had a time machine to travel back in time to fix my mistakes. Or at the very least have the balls to not give up on my dreams. If I’d fought for them the way Paul did, then maybe my life wouldn’t be at an irredeemable dead end.
Static reminds me of a secular riff on a Charles Martin novel. I recommend this book to anyone who is living or trying to live, questioning life, hating life, mourning having to live a hard life and/or saying “fuck life.” Not once did Brendan Gillen fall short of his storyline. A page-turner in every sense of the word, Static gave me incentive to keep reading to find out what Paul would do next. After a thorough in-depth introspection, I found myself reading the book again, wondering if there might be a part two to Paul’s adventures of self-discovery.