Perv: A Love Novel

Perv: A Love Story

William Morrow, 352 pp., $24

Remember those golden years of puberty, when afternoons consisted of drug-induced orgies with Hare Krishnas and sadistic gangbangs with the town whore? Well, neither do I, but Bobby Stark certainly does. The title character of Jerry Stahl's first foray into fiction (after his autobiographical Permanent Midnight) experiences the gamut of adolescent catastrophes, from his high school expulsion to his eventual Bonnie & Clyde-style road trip with a disgruntled Hare Krishna named Michelle. And he tells it all with the ease of a drunken jock reciting his exploits to the team. Sadly, many of Bobby's pornographic escapades and gruesome disasters are simply too shocking to take seriously. The heart of Perv lies not in Bobby's blink-and-you'll-miss-it love for Michelle, but in the love he feels for his father, a caring man who gave his life to a speeding streetcar ("In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages"). Stahl manages to eke out poignant moments of insight from this relationship in the most surprising of circumstances. Always entertaining, Perv makes the typical teenage experience seem like an episode of Little House on the Prairie.