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Author of the novel GRAB ON TO ME TIGHTLY AS IF I KNEW THE WAY, published in 2006 by Harper Perennial.

For other stuff, including poems, essays and two whole short stories, please visit NO SLANDER.

Visit my page on GOOD READS where among other things you can rate my book, write a review, find out what other people are reading etc.

BLURBS

"Finally here's a novel of real feeling about an era that's already been rushed to nostalgic box-set status. Bryan Charles trades in glib knowingness for deeper kinds of irony, never flinches from anger and yearning, and pulls off some charged, risky prose, to boot. Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way is as brave and funny a debut as I've read in a long time." --Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

"Even among the literature one admires and enjoys there is a special category of writing that shoots into you like a bolt of electricity, sparking all kinds of excited feelings about art and life and writing, that fills you with the spirit of possibility and makes you laugh. Grab On to Me Tightly As If I Knew the Way is such a book." --Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist and How to be a Man

"If you were one of those kids in high school who played sports or were, you know, happy and popular or whatever, I dont know what to say to you. If you were actually made of flesh and bone like the rest of us, fumbling your way through, and looking at the world like its not quite right but you dont know why, Bryan Charles will get inside your brain and make sense of it for you once and for all, and while hes at it hell make you laugh hard and possibly scream in pain, but in a good way, in a way that makes you feel known". --Elizabeth Crane, author of When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory

*Starred Review* The wistful title (taken from song lyrics by the band Pavement), eye-catching cover art from Chicago printmaker Jay Ryan, and fine writing from the gifted Charles make for a powerful combination in a debut novel that seems poised to generate a fair amount of buzz. It's 1992, and Vim Sweeney, newly graduated from Kalamazoo High School and a member of the band Judy Lumpers, is casting a wary eye toward the future: "college, beer, job, marriage, babies, debt, divorce, nuclear annihilation." Kurt Cobain is taking the music world by storm, hometown boy Derek Jeter is making his mark in the major leagues, and Vim is washing dishes at the Gull Lake Cafe side by side with dour ex-felon Wendell, wondering all the while if "it's too early in the game to concede defeat." Charles strings together poetic, episodic glimpses of Vim's life, including his erotic infatuation with his bandmate's girlfriend, his anger at his deadbeat dad and love for his stepfather, and, most of all, his desperate yearning to make sense of the world. Telegraphing ambience in the details--pithy T-shirt slogans, brightly lit donut shops, apt song lyrics--Charles draws a loving if unforgiving portrait of the seedy, semirural Midwest. His approach--plenty of heart and laugh-out-loud humor--will invite comparisons to Nick Hornby, but let it be said that Charles does it his way. --Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

"Bryan Charles's unlikely hero, Vim Sweeney, revitalizes the coming-of-age genre." --Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago

"Pretty much every halfway decent novel with a teenage narrator gets compared to The Catcher in the Rye. Usually the author's a big phony, passing off YA crap as fancy literature. Not Bryan Charles, whose debut, Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, is a stellar read. His messed-up, seriously melancholy, punk-rock romantic narrator, Vim Sweeney, is the true-blue modern incarnation of Holden Caulfield. If Salinger's boy had graduated from high school in the mid-90s in small-town Michigan, he would have played in a lame band, fallen for the drummer's sexy depressive girlfriend, quit his dish-washing job for no reason, written imaginary letters to his absentee father, made smart remarks to cover up his sadness, and just about fallen apart from how heartbreaking and funny and stupid and excellent life is. Think Salinger sprinkled with Nick Hornby, Chuck Klosterman, Sam Lipsyte, and Matthew Sharpe. Bottom line? Catch him while you can." --DailyCandy San Francisco

"Addictive . . . the first-time author's writing is funny and unpredictable, and he proves impressively adept at capturing the inchoate ache of adolescent longing." --Washington Post Media Mix, 6/18/06

"Go buy Bryan Charles's brave and beautifully written novel about music and growing up, Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way." --Time Out New York

". . . sketches a teenage identity crisis of the early ’90s in sharp detail.”--Village Voice

"Charles’ somewhat heavy hand produces not only a convincing, pitiable sketch of a teenager but also a disarming main character . . . It’s all so uncomfortably familiar that you can’t help wanting to cut this wound-up kid some slack . . . Charles also has a talent for creating scenes in record stores and at all-ages shows that are almost cinematic . . . He has created what is inarguably an exercise in nostalgia, but it is a gentle and candid one."--Shauna Cowal, Washington City Paper

"Great . . . my book of the year . . . steeped in incredible music, it is so beautifully written I was in tears at times from the prose alone . . ."--Gary Lightbody of the rock band Snow Patrol