Three Squirt Dog

Three Squirt Dog, Rick Ridgway, St. Martin's Press, 1994

Set in 1980's suburban Cleveland, here is the story of Bud Carew, a twenty-something college graduate with an English degree and no idea what to do with it, and his younger brother Omar. Their father died the previous year, and Mom ran off to join an Oregon commune, so the two live with their uncle Dewey, owner of a local record store. This is a chronicle of one summer in Bud's life: drinking with his buddies and puking; spending a whole five weeks without Jane, his girlfriend, who is on a forced family vacation; pulling occasional shifts at the record store; working two nights as a night stocker at a local supermarket; Omar is sent, unwillingly, on an extended vacation to visit Mom in Oregon; all to a soundtrack of Alex Chilton, the Ramones and Motorhead. Perhaps the "highlight' of the book is the annual Fourth of July neighborhood farting contest.

I hated to see this novel end. Ridgway has a real gift for raunchy language without going overboard. This is better than, and different from, the usual bored-suburbanites-in-the-80s novels in that Bud willingly listens to classical music and reads authors like Flannery O'Connor and Henry Miller. This one gets two thumbs-up.