Drama City — George Pelecanos
Little, Brown
2005
Rating:


One of the toughest lessons dogcatcher Lorenzo Brown learns in George Pelecanos' "Drama City" is that some animals cannot be saved. After years of mistreatment and turning angry to defend itself, some dogs have to be put down before they hurt anyone else.

Parole officer Rachel Lopez believes differently. She has to. Rachel spends her nights wandering from bar to bedroom, cutting her alcoholism with anonymous, rough sex. In some ways she's further beyond saving than her earnest, former gang member parolee Lorenzo. Lorenzo has an easier time resisting the world of his gang leader friend Nigel Johnson than Rachel does extricating herself from her world of depravity.

With great suspense, Pelecanos slowly turns the screw on his characters. A great tragedy will befall one of these people, a transfiguring event that will either allow redemption from the darkness or cause the characters to be completely consumed by it. Once the pieces are set in motion, there's nothing to do but watch with horror as the inevitable happens.

Pelecanos finds the drama in his city by illustrating the social ills of Washington, D.C., with realism and hard-bitten narration. While passing a mural of Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver, Lorenzo recalls that, "They'd had pictures of folks like them in just about every classroom Lorenzo had ever been in, but the pictures hadn't stopped him or anyone he knew from going down to the corner." The pessimism is so pervasive and so understandable under the circumstances that when someone unexpectedly finds a chance for hope in a murderous situation, it feels like a miracle.

Posted Sunday, July 17, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/book/george.pelecanos/drama.city