Stations of the Cross
Looking back at my recent reviews as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewer programme, I am either a harsh reviewer or I have been unlucky with getting books that capture my imagination. It was wonderful therefore to receive Robert Dunn’s Stations of the Cross, which goes a long way towards redressing the balance.
The novel follows a fictional music star, Dyson Burnette, in the autumn of his career. It has been years since his last album of new material and, caught between increasingly strident demands from his record company and his own ennui, he retreats to the small town in Mexico where he originally found his voice as a songwriter. Searching for his lost mojo, he discovers a new muse and, in painful fits and starts, the music begins to flow again starting with a resurrection of his lost song, Stations of the Cross.
Initially I was sceptical. It is, after all, an audacious move to imagine a space for a superstar who should slot into the collective consciousness alongside luminaries such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Likewise, it is a bold move for a novelist to write about the penning of a song. However, as Burnette loses himself in the dusty streets of an isolated, sun-drenched resort, the pages began to sing to me.
Does Dyson get his mojo back? That would be telling but Robert Dunn certainly knows how to get his groove on. /5.