Review of Trip by Amie Barrodale

The uneven pacing and tangents into bizarre scenarios in Trip made me feel somewhat disconnected from the story, but the moments of dark humor and the promise of an unorthodox payoff kept me reading and consistently curious.

Sandra is a documentary producer at a death conference in Nepal when she dies in an unlikely, mundane accident. The majority of the speakers milling around talking at each other and preparing for their presentations are insufferable hacks, but after Sandra's death, it becomes clear that some of the least believable are actually able to communicate with the dead through previously insane-seeming methods. This was one of my favorite elements of the book.

Sandra is presented in life as a relatively unsympathetic character, overly sure of herself and often selfish, unwilling to entertain others' ideas or viewpoints. (Her ex-husband Vic is truly insufferable, talking in circles, revoltingly apologetic, and so average as to feel like a gray, humdrum, forgettable human being.) In death, she persists in obtuse behavior before eventually becoming consumed with purpose and trying to get to her son Trip.

Sandra is caught in the bardo, a limbo between life and death, and she encounters other stuck characters in strange states; she learns how to temporarily take over a living person's body (just before the dead person advising her transforms into a crow); and although she can't speak or be heard (except by select, inept individuals), she attempts to save her autistic teenaged son Trip, who, through an unlikely series of events, has hitchiked from a therapy school in the Northeast to the center of a hurricane off the coast of Florida and onto a sailboat with a relapsed alcoholic seemingly incapable of ushering them to safety.

Trip is Sandra's son, who journeys during the novel (as does Sandra), but the psychedelic cover and zigzagging story of Trip also bring to mind a drug-induced trip and elements that defy logic and traditional structure and understanding.

The irregular pacing and abrupt entrance of edgy scenes made the novel feel meandering. There's a scene made up of strange dynamics in which Sandra is perilously stuck in a cave tunnel during an expedition in Nepal and rather than fearing for her life, she is panicked about others touching her feet as they try to extract her. A surreal, extended series of sexual fetish vignettes pop up regarding dead-spirit Sandra and a man from the conference...also, spirit Sandra takes over this man's body and forces him to animate in a bizarre set of darkly funny scenes that feel like Barrodale's Weekend with Bernie.

I considered crying uncle on this book early on because I felt whiplashed and steadily confused about what the heck was going on, but I pushed through on this bizarre story in hopes that I could find out. Parts of the novel gelled for me while other scenes and elements headed off metaphorical cliffs, but Trip kept me consistently curious, and the darkly funny moments kept me reading.

More from Amie Barrodale

Amie Barrodale is also the author of You Are Having a Good Time and William Wei.

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