Buds of 75

The world of the 1970s was a strange time. The Summer of Love was gone, swept away by stark reality, but it left behind the tenth generation, millions of kids endowed with a decidedly crooked path to follow. Take for example Bud, a fourth-grade parochial schooler with a sarcastic attitude, incisive wit and a lot of questions. Big ones.

A novel in the form of ten short (4K words each) vignettes, THE BUDS OF 75 tells the story of a kid and his family, a big colorful bunch, as they negotiate the fallout from the hippies of Woodstock and the rise of conservative America. Bud goes to a Catholic elementary school, wears glasses, likes the cop shows on TV and drives the Sisters crazy with questions about God, Heaven and Hell. An altar boy and ruffian both, he thinks too much, asks adults the kind of questions they don't want to hear and marvels at the doings of grown-ups as completely crazy. Bud is coming of age, in an age of absurdity.

Packed with timely pop and cultural references, THE BUDS OF 75 is very funny, quite touching at points, and engaging from sentence one. Wholesome but not cloyingly sweet, it's picaresque, stylistically smooth with a nonlinear narrative and deep sensory detail. The third person prose is clean and engaging, alternating complex, crafted sentences with short ones for punch. THE BUDS OF 75 would appeal to both old and young readers as a sort of Pepys' Diary for the 1970s, a record of everyday life. A nostalgic look back for Gen X, and to every other reader a vivid sojourn in a bygone world now slowly vanishing in time.