And Drinking

I Drink, I Fall Down, No Problem

Few rookie novelists are as self-assured as Tim Relf, the British journalist whose Stag: A Story About Coming of Age -- In a Bar (Warner; paperback, $13.95) chronicles a quartet of university buddies who return to their college town for a three-day bachelor party. During the revelry, the protagonist, an underachieving, overindulging marketing guy named Rob is forced to face the fact that his friends have built lives while he's been haunting the pubs. "How did they become like this?" Rob asks. "It was like they'd lived longer than me."

Stag in outline sounds triter than it is; Relf's gimlet-eyed execution is what makes it a great read. Don't be deterred by the novel's less than appealing start, in which Rob bellyaches about breaking up with the girlfriend he was sure he would marry one day. That part smells like warmed-over Nick Hornby. Once that rough patch is navigated, however, it's clear sailing, as Relf, with nary an ill-considered word, heaps humiliation after humiliation like a stack of flapjacks on poor, sodden Rob. Rob is not the most sympathetic of characters, but he's so feckless (and drinks himself so legless) that you'd have to be heartless not to hope he grabs hold of something firm on his way down. I turned the pages just to see how he'd extricate himself from the fine messes he got himself into, and what disaster he would touch off next. Not that Rob can recall all the trouble he causes. "This is what Saturday nights had become like," he says. "Instead of remembering them I heard about them."

Having set this tone of cringing pathos, Relf could be forgiven for an awkward conclusion. Instead, he delivers elegantly. Rob concludes, "The decision to stop anything was actually dozens, hundreds, thousands of decisions, repeated over and over again." His journey to that insight is riveting.

Bob Ivry has written for Esquire, Popular Science, Maxim, Spin, Details and Self.

I Drink, I Fall Down, No Problem

Few rookie novelists are as self-assured as Tim Relf, the British journalist whose Stag: A Story About Coming of Age -- In a Bar (Warner; paperback, $13.95) chronicles a quartet of university buddies who return to their college town for a three-day bachelor party. During the revelry, the protagonist, an underachieving, overindulging marketing guy named Rob is forced to face the fact that his friends have built lives while he's been haunting the pubs. "How did they become like this?" Rob asks. "It was like they'd lived longer than me."

Stag in outline sounds triter than it is; Relf's gimlet-eyed execution is what makes it a great read. Don't be deterred by the novel's less than appealing start, in which Rob bellyaches about breaking up with the girlfriend he was sure he would marry one day. That part smells like warmed-over Nick Hornby. Once that rough patch is navigated, however, it's clear sailing, as Relf, with nary an ill-considered word, heaps humiliation after humiliation like a stack of flapjacks on poor, sodden Rob. Rob is not the most sympathetic of characters, but he's so feckless (and drinks himself so legless) that you'd have to be heartless not to hope he grabs hold of something firm on his way down. I turned the pages just to see how he'd extricate himself from the fine messes he got himself into, and what disaster he would touch off next. Not that Rob can recall all the trouble he causes. "This is what Saturday nights had become like," he says. "Instead of remembering them I heard about them."

Having set this tone of cringing pathos, Relf could be forgiven for an awkward conclusion. Instead, he delivers elegantly. Rob concludes, "The decision to stop anything was actually dozens, hundreds, thousands of decisions, repeated over and over again." His journey to that insight is riveting.

Bob Ivry has written for Esquire, Popular Science, Maxim, Spin, Details and Self.