Vorab-RezensentenMichael Imperioli

Lee Child recruits Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Ames, Cara Black, and others to reveal nicotine’s scintillating alter egos. In recent years, nicotine has become as verboten as many hard drugs. The literary styles in this volume are as varied as the moral quandaries herein, and the authors have successfully unleashed their incandescent imaginations on the subject matter, fashioning an immensely addictive collection. Featuring brand-new stories by: Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Ames, Eric Bogosian, Achy Obejas, Michael Imperioli, Hannah Tinti, Ariel Gore, Bernice L. McFadden, Cara Black, Christopher Sorrentino, David L. Ulin, Jerry Stahl, Lauren Sanders, Peter Kimani, and Robert Arellano. Inspired by the ongoing international success of the city-based Akashic Noir Series (Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Paris Noir, etc.), Akashic created the Drug Chronicles Series in 2011. Following The Speed Chronicles (William T. Vollmann, Megan Abbott), The Cocaine Chronicles (Lee Child, Laura Lippman), The Heroin Chronicles (Jerry Stahl, Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch), and The Marijuana Chronicles (Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates) comes The Nicotine Chronicles, masterfully curated by blockbuster hit maker Lee Child.

Read by the author Matthew is a sixteen-year-old boy living in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1976. In the span of a few short months he loses his two most important male role models: his father and grandfather. His mother (receiving a much larger inheritance than expected) decides to uproot Matthew and herself and move to a posh apartment building on the East Side of Manhattan. Although only three miles away from his boyhood home, "The City" is a completely new and strange world to Matthew. On the cusp of being an adult but up until now rather innocent and unworldly, Matthew (now attending an exclusive prep school) is introduced to all the totems of manhood (love, sex, alcohol, drugs, driving a car, and working a job), all in a brief, intense, and compressed period of time. In the midst of this coming of age, Matthew becomes friend (and quasi assistant) to Lou Reed, who lives with his transgender girlfriend Rachel in the same building as Matthew. The drug-addled, artistic/shamanic Lou Reed eventually becomes an unorthodox father figure to Matthew who finds himself head over heels in love with the mysterious Veronica, a wise-beyond-her-years girl he meets at his new school.

Matthew is a sixteen-year-old living in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1976. After he loses his two most important male role models, his father and grandfather, his mother uses her inheritance to uproot Matthew and herself to a posh apartment building in Manhattan. Although only three miles away from his boyhood home, “the city” is a completely new and strange world to Matthew. Matthew soon befriends (and becomes a quasi-assistant to) Lou Reed, who lives with his transgender girlfriend Rachel in the same building. The drug-addled, artistic/shamanic musician eventually becomes an unorthodox father figure to Matthew, who finds himself head over heels for the mysterious Veronica, a wise-beyond-her-years girl he meets at his new school. Written from the point of view of Matthew at age eighteen, two years after the story begins, the novel concludes with an epilogue in the year 2013, three days after Lou Reed’s death, with Matthew in his fifties.