Publishers Weekly Review

DEATH & REDEMPTION IN LONDON & L.A.

Lionel Rolfe.Dead End Street ( www.deadendstreet.com)

Journalist, bohemian and left-wing thinker Rolfe (Fat Man on the Left;InSearch of Literary L.A.,etc.) offers his musings during 1999 against the vastly different cultural settings of London and Los Angeles. He begins with his earliest memories of his famous uncle, the distinguished violinist Yehudi Menuhin (especially his interpretation of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata). After attending the high-profile memorial service given his uncle at Westminster Abbey in June 1999, Rolfe experiences a series of deaths, or separations and endings, that form the thread with which he ties together, albeit loosely, the disparate elements of his autobiographical tale. First his good friend Nieson, a police beat reporter, dies a few days after Menuhin, followed by the death of Rolfe's ex-roommate Carl, whom Rolfe portrays in sharp, unforgiving contrast to Nieson. Then Rolfe's wife leaves him. Rolfe goes on to describe his bizarre (nonsexual) encounters with three different L.A. women (a street person, a lesbian and an artist). And then there are Marianne, with whom he breaks his "two-year hiatus of celibacy," and Lilly, who teaches Rolfe "that the immutable things in the new Millennium will remain unchanged." (In other words, there will always be a violinist somewhere playing the Kreutzer Sonata.) There are lyric moments in this book that are poignant and insightful but for the most part, Rolfe's presentation is uneven and unsatisfying.