Countering Points in a Review of My Book, PUNK DISCO BOHEMIAN

Here's my favorite section of a recent four-star review of my novel, Punk Disco Bohemian, which appears in both Goodreads and Amazon and is written by Iranian-born writer Neda Aria.

"A coming-of-age story steeped in the hedonism and upheaval of the 1970s, Punk Disco Bohemian plunges the reader into an era of shifting social norms, disco-lit dance floors, and radical self-invention. Ali is at the center of it all, navigating a world that offers both exhilarating freedom and unexpected dangers. She parties, she experiments, she stumbles. Through Jenkins’ unembellished prose, we follow Ali’s journey without romanticism or nostalgia—just the raw, unfiltered reality of youth in search of meaning.

"Jenkins is not interested in the usual sentimental beats of the genre. Instead, she offers a protagonist whose self-destructive tendencies are as compelling as her yearning for connection. Ali’s encounters—with lovers, friends, and strangers—are transactional in nature, fueled by a mix of curiosity and desperation. She wants to belong, but she also wants to be untethered. Provincetown provides a backdrop for this contradiction: a place where outsiders find refuge but also where excess has its consequences.

"For all its historical specificity, the novel resists the trap of period-piece indulgence. The 1970s are not merely aesthetic set dressing but an active force shaping Ali’s world. Jenkins sketches the queer enclaves and disco-fueled revelry of Provincetown with the precision of someone who understands both their allure and their limits. Through Ali’s eyes, we see the intoxicating promise of reinvention but also the precariousness of a life built on fleeting moments."

All of this is accurate. But when speaking of my novel's limitations in the ending paragraphs, Aria refers to a lack of narrative drive, failing to understand that the story of Punk Disco Bohemian is primarily internal--the narrator addressing herself--using unadorned language in order to stay in what feels most real about remembrance while grounding the text for the reader. 

Punk Disco Bohemian is also compressed, suggestive of more than is actually stated. Very few critics of this work perceived that. My novel's approach is not only direct and unadorned stylistically, but multi-layered due to the compression, and revolutionary in that it does not intend to please the reader, but if anything, contradict her expectations. I did not want my novel to be conventional in any way, including structurally speaking.

I would have hoped a writer and reader of transgressive literature such as Aria would have seen beyond the seeming simplicity of my novel's surface to its elaborate internal structure--which would require a feeling and intuitive eye, not merely an intellectual one. 




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