Kicking Tomorrow

Helen Hacksel is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

Multi-media journalist Daniel Richler’s first novel is something of a
1970s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Like his author, Robbie
Bookbinder is the son of a middle-class Jewish family living in the
Montreal suburb of Westmount. Robbie is involved with a punk-rock band,
as was Richler back in the same era. Each has a famous parent; in
Robbie’s case, it’s his mother, a militant environmentalist with her
own ubiquitous television show.

This is a coming-of-age book. It looks at the dark side of the teenage
psyche, with its lust, egoism, self-aggrandizement, and self-debasement.
The images are often crude, and Robbie’s vocabulary consists mainly of
expletives and slang. By contrast, the narration is clever and
imaginative, and races along at top speed.

Robbie’s is a world of motorcycle gangs, strip-tease joints, heavy
drugs, and violence. But his journey through it is often funny, and his
innate decency (which he tries hard to overcome) keeps it from the realm
of the truly vicious.

The book convincingly re-creates the pop culture of the 1980s. Robbie
calls it “the Invisible Decade. The Great Hangover.” He envies those
who experienced the 1960s and Woodstock, with its “sense of
commitment, that belonging.” Robbie’s dream is to shake up the adult
world and terrorize those he holds responsible for its state. The battle
cry of his punk band is to be “All parents must die.” All his
efforts go terribly wrong. After a last, desperate, drug-crazed trip, he
fizzles out and heads back to his long-suffering parents.

At the family’s country cottage, Robbie finally experiences “that
sense of commitment, that belonging” at a huge environmental protest
rally, led by his mother. Robbie has embraced the Cause and his band,
“Hell’s Yell’s,” is finally in the spotlight (introduced by
Mom). His mother’s dedication is real, but her battle to right the
world has often seemed to mirror Robbie’s own. She has had as many
run-ins with the police, and her battle for TV ratings echoes Robbie’s
struggles to promote his message-laden band. Because of this, the ending
is a bit of a letdown: a damp squib after a spectacular fireworks
display.