A long shadow of melancholy hangs over RODE, a novel by J. Adams about a young man’s search for sexual identity, intimacy, and self-acceptance. Jack is a disaffected loner who has found himself drifting through life with no clear sense of purpose or belonging, bouncing between New Mexico and California as he stumbles into a series of sexual encounters. Most of those encounters end quickly and unhappily, but even those with whom Jack finds a semblance of genuine connection—such as his sometime-girlfriend Skelly, or Kevin, an escort with whom Jack forms a shaky but tender bond—he inevitably abandons. Caught in a state of limbo between adulthood and maturity, Jack cannot help but seek the closeness of others but lacks the clarity or stability to avoid disappointing himself and the people around him.
Like its itinerant anti-hero, RODE feels rootless and lacks a clear sense of direction, constantly moving but seldom finding a resolution. While the absence of a strong overarching plotline results in an unfocused—and at times repetitive—reading experience, it’s also more faithful to the novel’s purposes. Adams is more concerned with following his character’s emotional progress than with the contrivances of traditional drama, and Jack, fortunately, is an agreeable traveling companion, his sardonic sense of humor and eye for the world’s absurdities balancing his introspective temperament. Adams delves into Jack’s interior life with sensitivity and details that feel true and lived, and brings the same keen-eyed observational skill to the worlds Jack moves through. While its emotional realism lends itself to unresolvable, ultimately unsatisfying, ambiguities, the novel feels all the more authentic for its avoidance of simplistic conclusions.
RODE is, by turns, an affecting and frustrating novel, one that feels truthful while withholding from readers—or, for that matter, its protagonist—simple answers or conventional resolutions to the struggle for a coherent sense of self. It’s a difficult trick to pull off, but J. Adams brings to the novel a confident and engaging voice that makes RODE a compelling journey.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader