Michael Shilling

It was surprising how the experience of the Blood Orphans in Amsterdam slightly mimicked my one and only experience in Amsterdam. Mine included a trip with my drug obsessed father in a wonderland of “tea” shops and the deterioration of what little we had left of our relationship. Thus the draw to this story for me. Not normally drawn toward fiction, I was interested and intrigued by how Schilling, a young author on the fiction scene would deal with the complex relationships of an entire rock band, as well as the peripheral characters attached to them. The result I found was not an in depth one, but the story is not about delving completely into the cerebral, which I find is occasionally overdone in both fiction and non-fiction, because the author is also trying figure out their own issues on the page. All in all, it was enough psychology to stay interested and then enjoy the entertaining aspects of the book. Character wise, I found Bobby, the eczema riddled bassist the most heartening, though he was portrayed, as the most bastardy. This is a fun book, not too radical, though dealing with the craziness of rock and roll bands, and not to heady that you’ll need a shrink afterward.… (mehr)