At times grand and quixotic, at times a reporter of the human heart, and at times not much more than a pain in the ass to his friends and neighbors, Peter Foster is the Willy Loman protagonist of Kevin C. Wilson's shaggy-dog/ keen slice of life novel, The Route. In the Route, Peter is a homeless handyman, long since alienated from his sons and living on the edge of the dream of selling his screenplay as he works (very) odd jobs and scrambles to keep a home over his head. Events unfold for Peter in the manner of one of those old comic strips from the turn of the century, the type of comic strip that is populated by blue collar types hungry for life and their ne'er do well friends. And Peter in turns plays friend and jailor, nurse and therapist, painter and poet, booze-courier and cat-evictor, fair-to-middling hero and penny-ante villain to the good, bad and ugly people along his route. Good stuff!

While laced with the stuff of tearing heartache and a dosed with bustling helpings of shaggy-dog comedy, the Route is always carried and redeemed by Peter's own narrative voice, a voice that is alive with contradictions. Peter is overeducated and underpaid. Peter says that "timing is everything" but is constantly missing the boat. Peter's soul is haunted by failure, but he remains optimistic.

In Peter's voice, Kevin Wilson does a service to his readers. He has the ability to be elegant and folksy, cruel and loving and distinctly American (distinctly Floridian, to be more precise) in a way that reminds me of (of all people) Larry McMurtry, an author I'm very fond of.

If all this sounds a little too highfalutin, I don't mean it to be, it's fun, smart and the plot is neither abstract nor absurdist (although there are absurd moments). Read it while drinking in a bar. Preferably a bar in Florida. ( )