Alex In Wonderland. A Novel. by Lauren Spencer
Synopsis
Alex In Wonderland synopsis
Alex in Wonderlandsynopsis
On a summer day in 1991, Alex Dean steps through the doorway of music magazine Blastin New York City to begin her dream job as a rock’n’roll journalist. Wanting nothing more than to uncover the secrets hidden away inside the hearts and minds of musicians, she finds out fast that the only thing the mostly male staff want her to uncover is her underwear. Struggling to get on top of a story so they’ll stop getting under her skin, a cassette of a new band lands on her doorstep, their rawness blows her mind and cracks open her heart. Her gut tells her they’re going to be huge and she becomes determined that this band will usher her into the Lester Bangs, Hunter Thompson journalistic pantheon, although with a much-needed female twist.
Despite a less-than-successful first interview with the band, she decides to follow them to Dublin. Upon arrival, things quickly unravel when she finds the drummer—with whom heavy flirtation and a make-out session in New York had led her to believe she’d found her rock-boy soulmate—in bed with her supposed best friend, and the singer disappeared into thin air. With her boss hounding her for a story she hasn’t yet gotten, Alex puts him off for as long as she can as she follows leads, tussles with a band of egocentric wanna-bes, and bonds with two wise women. Beginning to accept that she’ll never find him, she steps through the door of a veteran’s lodge on the eve of her departure hoping to disappear from her troubles if only for a little while. It's there that she finds the singer sitting alone at a back table. Working her way into his confidence with the help of multiple whiskeys and pints, the story of a young man who, like her, found solace from a confusing world through the sound and fury of music and who, also like her, had his passion smashed by a music-making machinery only interested in selling his soul flows.
By the end of the evening he’s decided that if he wants to find his way back to his songs, then he’s needs to reclaim his story and he agrees to give Alex a proper interview. The next day, as she waits at the appointed spot, she gets news that he’s been found dead. Destroyed, she flies home ready to step back into her old life until, while listening to a recording she’d made of him playing with the musicians at the lodge, he suddenly comes through her headphones. What he says jolts her into understanding that if she has any chance of living inside her dreams, she needs to make her own story come to life, and for that he can help even from beyond the grave.
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Best-selling author Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries:
Lauren Spencer perfectly captures coming of age in the 90s, the thrill of finding a new world and a new sound wholly our own. The added bonus is seeing it all through the eyes of Alex, Spencer’s thoroughly relatable and hilarious, heroine. If you ever carried a mosh-pit bruise as a badge of honor you will love Alex Dean Is Asking For It.
