Description
Fiction. California interest. Steve wants to be a surfer—one of those demi-gods who walk on water. But for a kid from the San Fernando Valley who's scared of the ocean this is no easy task. Through his encounters with tough Malibu locals, shady surfboard designers, haole-hating Hawaiians, uptight surf stars, sex-hungry surf groupies and stoned big-wave riders, Steve learns the humorous as well as the darker side of surfing. With finely honed irony and a lightness of touch, Kevin McAleer tells a story of friendship, coming of age in the 1970s, and the fascination of surfing—while also imparting a wealth of knowledge that can compete with any how-to book on the sport (including an extensive surf glossary as appendix).
"As SURFERBOY takes us on a ride up and down the waves, we experience both the ups and downs of the surfing life, with the author making short work of that romanticized image of good vibrations and beach babes. Yet nevertheless, by book's end, we still have a wistful yearning for it all."—literaturkritik.de
"Perhaps the saying is true—that happiness makes you stupid. Maybe surfers are so happy that they should only start writing about surfing after they've stopped. Kevin McAleer, who grew up in California, has given us an autobiographical novel well worth reading."—Mare
"Kevin McAleer has written the first pure surf novel—the portrait of a subculture with roots in Hawaii, its boom during the 1960s, through to the 1970s and Surf Punks and New Wavers and the scene's utter commercialization."—GEO
"SURFERBOY is one of those novels where after just two sentences you're so deep into it that you'd swear you've got sand in your undies."—Radio Fritz
"SURFERBOY is a cleverly arranged bildungsroman and the story of a subculture's decline and fall."—Berliner Tagesspiegel
Author Bio
Kevin McAleer was born in Santa Monica, California, and now lives as a writer and translator in Berlin. Notable among his books are the novels SURFERBOY (PalmArtPress 2018) and BERLIN TANGO (PalmArtPress 2020) as well as the epic poem ERROL FLYNN: AN EPIC LIFE (PalmArtPress 2022, revised paperback edition) which eminent film critic Rex Reed praised as "a daring adventure in biographical refurbishment," and the historical monograph DUELING: THE CULT OF HONOR IN FIN-DE- SIÈCLE GERMANY, which was chosen by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as one of its "Books of the Year."
Author City: BERLIN GER