Review: "Chopper Music," by Jay Allan Storey

Post date: Oct 13, 2012 5:54:32 PM

hereJackson Reilly is a loser, a chopper-riding, strip-joint bouncer drowning in a sea of drugs and booze. By his own admission, he feels like a jig-saw puzzle missing a piece. But when his estranged mother dies, Jackson finds himself drawn back into the world of classical and jazz music – his parents’ world and one he had run away from years before. Slowly, painfully, the music pulls Jackson out of the morass that he lives in until he realizes he has found the missing piece of the puzzle that is his life.

Author Jay Allan Storey’s novella, “Chopper Music,” provides a delicately painted landscape of strip joints and concert halls, beer mugs and tea cups, strippers and ladies. Jackson Reilly is hardly a man you would want to befriend, but with Storey’s writing it is impossible not to find yourself cheering him on, cursing him when he falls, and cheering again as he rallies to find his place in the world – at the keyboard of a jazz piano. “Chopper Music” is a quick, addictive read, and an enjoyable one, too.

I give it four stars. ****