The Orange Spotlight

Beautiful Piece by Joseph G. Peterson (Switchgrass Books, Oct. 2009)

"We always fall asleep smoking one more cigarette in bed."

And so begins the meditative, gritty, and near o.c.d novel Beautiful Piece by Joseph G. Peterson. Set in the middle of a Chicago heat wave, Beautiful Piece follows Robert through a looping tale of sex, friendship, and necessity of action. If you have ever made a decision that has drastically altered the course of your live then you will relate to the way that Peterson examines over and over the events of an hour or so of one day in his life. Every time he loops through the event of this one encounter he reveals a new piece of information or explains it in a slightly different way until the very end and a big pay off.

Essentially, Robert, a lonely man feeling the effects of heat, meets Lucy at a gas station and helps her with her pump her gas. She in turn invites him back to her place for a drink. It's not until post relations that she reveals that she has an overprotective and violent fiancé named Matthew Gliss. Through out the novel Robert replays this meeting and a handful of other situations to reveal the climax of the story. There are a couple of key themes in Beautiful Piece, but the main two are contained in the following questions: If you walked into a bank and find it empty, without power, and with the safe wide-open and filled with cash, what would you do? and How far do you go in follow your mantra or modus-operandi? In the story Robert's mantra is the song "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty. This floats in the background of the tale every time Robert faces a moment where he could "back down" and take the easy or safe path, but decides to plow ahead despite all of the "bad omens".

Ultimately, it is Peterson's writing and rhythm that sucks you in. This novel has a pace that I don't think I've ever encountered before. Beautiful Piece was released last fall by NIU's Switchgrass Books. His next novel, Wanted: Elevator Man will be released this Spring.

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