The Rhythm of the Road: A Novel

By Albyn Leah Hall

The mesmerizing debut novel about driving trucks, loving music, and growing up. ? A truck driver's daughter who grows up in the front seat of her father's truck, Jo shares her father's love of country music, junk food, and the open highway. Jo's life is a perfect slice of Americana, except that their "open road" is in England, and her father - the gentle,? melancholy Bobby Pickering - is from Northern Ireland. The only truly American thing about Jo is her mother, whom she has never met. Jo is twelve when she and Bobby pick up hitchhiker Cosima Stewart, an American country singer whose band is touring England. They become dedicated fans, and Cosima, touched by the unlikely duo, comes to regard Jo with an indulgent, even sisterly, eye. But when Jo is sixteen, Bobby sinks into serious despair and Jo seeks refuge in Cosima and the band. When Bobby disappears, Jo's adoration becomes obsessive as she follows her idol all to the way to California. Here, in the sweltering Mohave Desert and alone for the first time, Jo must face the painful truths of her own life, the mother she has never known, and the father she can't force from her mind. With shades of Zadie Smith and Mark Haddon, Albyn Leah Hall's powerful debut is a page-turning study of what frightens us about one another and ourselves; of how we run away and what we can't, ultimately, escape from.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312359446
• ISBN13: 9780312359447
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

poignant reading

The Rhythm of the Road is a poignant read. Jo is a heart breaking character who is so full of life and emotion and a need to be loved. Albyn Leah Hall truly captures the angst of young womanhood! At the same, her depictions of "life on the road" particularly in the UK are engrossing. I couldn't put this book down and look forward to more writing by this author!

An Exquisite Tale of Lonliness and (Be)Longing

Albyn Hall's second novel covers the painful experiences of growing up in rather singular circumstances. Beginning with a negligent mother and hapless, though well-meaning father whose life revolves around trucking and traveling the lesser music scene, her central character - a young girl isolated by this lifestyle - negotiates relationships and forms attachments without adequate social savvy. Throughout, Hall provides fully-formed participants in a gripping plot which takes her heroine from childhood into young adulthood, from England to America and from misery into a possibly hopeful future. A very insightful and beautifully written work. Highly recommended.

Impossible to Put Down

Abandoned by her American mother as an infant, Jo Pickering grows up traveling the roads of Britain with Bobby, her music-loving, truck-driving dad. Left adrift by her father's apparent suicide, the teenage Jo attaches herself to Cosima, an American country music star she'd met years before. Jo's desperate desire to make a new family with Cosima and her band turns into a dangerous obsession. In Jo, Hall has created a completely original heroine. The chronicle of Jo's descent into madness and her redemption is impossible to put down. Hall's writing dances off the page, bringing the reader into Jo's haunted mind. The stops on Jo's journey are riveting, culminating in a very authentic "happy ending." Reviewed by Special Guest: Deb Gross 04/23/2007

A Closer Look at Country Music Culture!

"...will you look at the sight of it, Jo, will you have a look at that." Josephine and Bobby Pickering, father and daughter, spend most of the year driving cross-country in England. They live the life of free-spirits unhindered by the schedules and home issues of most people. They look at everything, exploring further when fascinated and dismissing when the subject or object fails to hold their attention. But what they often think about and yet never fully explore are the people and events that have shaped their personality, that haunt, terrorize, and plague them with grief to the point of unresolved depression. So Bobby reminisces about family and finds his comfort in the sweetness and sorrow of country music. Never do we hear much from him about Jo's mother, Rosalie, once she disappears from their lives. It's Jo who will deal with the disappearance in a most unexpected manner later in the novel. Jo is a people-watcher and immediately links to a young country singer, Cosima, with whom she later develops a sister-like relationship that really hints of the yearnings of a child for a mother. It is Cosima who initially helps Jo cope with the "departure" of Bobby, but what emerges over time becomes a hatred imploding and threatening to become murderous. Jo will eventually come to grips with her personal demons, but that's not the focus of this artistic work of fiction. Albyn Leah Hall is a literary artist who knows how to get under the character's surface appearance and reveal the "whole" personality with all of its grace, grit, and ambiguity. The reader is compelled to follow these characters despite likes or dislikes. They are so fascinating because they possess the qualities of "everyman," - you and me! In the beginning of the novel, one of the characters is reading a book about culture. It is the revelation of what really drives culture that is also the brilliant subplot threading through the rhythm of this novel. Art's motives and visions run deep through the hearts and minds of musicians, again touching the reader because of the empathy in the experience. Enchanting! A writer very much worth watching now and in the future! Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on January 23, 2007

a gripping journey

This taut, suspenseful novel is about many things, among them country music. It's also about travelling, as its title suggests, and about the bewildered search for a sense of place and identity. You could distil all this by saying that it's about loneliness; which brings us back to country music. Country music links and divides the anti-heroine, Josephine, and the object of her obsession, Cosima. More, it links and divides American and British culture, and Albyn Leah Hall delineates these similarities and differences with a vividness I've never seen before. There are three main characters in The Rhythm of the Road, but Josephine's the protagonist; and Hall uses her first-person narrative to allow us into a journey that might otherwise seem melodramatic or grotesque. In fact, it's one of the book's great achievements that you never give up on Josephine, however ridiculous or sinister her behaviour. Slipping easily from time-scale to time-scale, voice to voice without ever losing momentum, the author balances wit, horror and tenderness with equal deftness; in the end, I was moved to tears. To sum up: a page-turner, written in a clear and accessible style, that is also about important things. In other words, a real piece of American art.