RUM DIARY

Thompson’s early novel relates the misadventures of a group of unhappy, hard-drinking, and shiftless newspapermen in San Juan in the 1950s. Christopher Lane’s relatively youthful but scratchy voice and his tone of petulance fit the teller of the story, Paul Kemp, who is already jaded in his early thirties. It would have been nice if Lane could have injected some of the gonzo tone of Thompson’s later work to take the grim edge off Kemp’s periodic nastiness, but the text doesn’t justify it. Lane stays true to the novel’s essential seriousness and does a praiseworthy job of keeping the aimlessness, self-loathing, and self-indulgence involving to the end. W.M. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 06]