The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss

I read this book in preparation for a new book club I just joined. While the past books this club has read seem to match my taste, this one was not a winner in my book.

The story is about a group of teenagers and young twenty-somethings who live in Las Vegas. During the summer this takes place, one of them becomes a chauffeur for the women (girls, really), who form a prostitution ring. He struggles with the ethics of this role, as well as with his relationship with one of the prostitutes, whom he has known since childhood. He also struggles with wanting to leave Las Vegas to be with his successful career-driven girlfriend in LA, but isn't able to overcome the inertia of where he is today. Interspersed with the current-day story are flashbacks to when this group of friends were children, growing up together.

The writing was actually pretty good. One review on the back compared it to a work by Joan Didion; while that is an exaggeration in my book, the author did a good job of evoking time and place. What I disliked about the book was how graphic it was and how young the characters seemed. It was disturbing - at times I had to skim certain passages that were too hard to read. Having had that experience recently with Running with Scissors, it makes me wonder if is me who is having a harder time reading these passages as I get older rather than authors getting too graphic.

Either way, there was an air of hopelessness in this book that (spoiler alert) did not end happily. Each character became increasingly less redeemable throughout the book. If McGinniss was trying to paint a picture of despair, he was successful - I just didn't get anything out of the journey of reading the book.