I have no idea is goodreads adds the standard boilerplate to the review or not, but since Blogger doesn't: I won an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of this book for an honest review of it prior to publication.
I hate to use what may seem like a flippant title for this post, given it takes away from the serious nature of the topic, but frankly, one of my defense mechanisms is to make jokes when I'm uncomfortable.
And let's face it, Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski will make more than a few readers uncomfortable. Which is sad, since it's a very compelling read and a deep dive into suicidal ideation. something that often gets ignored or shoved away in real life.
We open with a statement from Mark, who explains the set up for this grand adventure. Mark, a failed writer, has decided to to rent a party bus, grab a few folks in similar mindsets on the way, then drive the bus off a cliff into the Pacific in San Francisco. The driver is contracted to drive them to the City by the Bay, but is supposed to get off before the final flight. The bus is wired with wifi and a cloud server to record journals and audio entries from the riders, although we also get text messages in there as well.
And so Mark and Dylan (the driver) begin the drive, picking up Karen first. Karen suffers from chronic pain, caused by her nerves mirroring pain to each other. She ends up naming her arachnoiditis "Spider". and many of her early journal entries talk about how Spider and depression kept her from living a normal life.
We then pick up Tyler, suffering from Eisenmenger Syndrome; Lisa, who's bipolar manifests in destructive ways; Vaughn, who's wife died a few months prior; Theresa and Jim, who look to want to punish her racist dad; Sunny Shanelle, the obese girl; Zeke, the drug addict; Theo, the nonbinary dreaming of a perfect world; and Peter, the philosopher.
There's quite a bit of interpersonal drama between the passengers, as most of them find friends and enemies among the other riders, and quite a bit of outside drama, as the purpose of the trip gets revealed to people outside the bus, leading to a bunch of drama as to whether or not Nebraska or Utah police will stop the bus. Colorado, having legalized assisted suicide, can more or less let them pass with minimal cooperation with the more hardline border states.
Quite a few of these characters resonated with me on a personal level. Zeke, who's living for his cat, General, and says that neither will live long without the other, puts me in mind of a friend of mine who has made similar statements in my presence. Shanelle, who's weight has lead to her being socially exiled. I too, like Theo, occasionally dream of a shining city of the hill where people can be themselves.I, however, am currently not living in a headspace where the ideation is almost omnipresent, where a disconnect notice sends me running for the knife drawer, or where a bad night at work has me wondering if a leash would make a good noose. And I thank whatever God may be that I've managed to get to where I am now. But these folks, they're in a moment I've known too well, or watched enough of my friends go through, where the idea of a happy ending is one where existence itself ends.
I did have a minor quibble towards the end, as the record of the bus trip gets uploaded to the internet, one gets the impression the person who hits send is judging the very same people they were part of for not trying hard enough. That may not be how it was intended, but it kind of felt that way.
One of Straczynski's greatest gifts, based on my exposure to his other projects, has always been getting inside his character's heads. This remains very true in this book, as even the characters you want to hate you wind up understanding better and indeed feeling empathy with. I found myself wishing each of them a happy ending, even if that end was not one I'd choose for myself any more.
Very well written and engaging read. I hope its release in July is a resounding success.
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