Whims & Vices

Maybe I'm not qualified to review this book because I spent the 60s in uniform (4 years ROTC, 6 years Army) and by the time the decade was over and this story began I had a wife and three kids. Still, my issue is not with political stances or sexual lifestyles (I loved On the Road by Jack Kerouac), it's with the writing. I really, Really, REALLY got tired of Max and his whining point of view. It's impossible to make even a tragic hero out of a lazy alcoholic who depends on a woman to work her butt off to keep him in booze and pot. By the time he hits the road, it's not because he's had an epiphany, it's because he doesn't have the guts to open his mouth and take a stand for what would work best for his so-called friends, so he runs away. Finally, for such a wimp to luck into real estate success in California is unbelievably unbelievable and turns the ending into fantasy.

I became immersed in this book from the very beginning. The three main characters were all so likable and believable. The author has a very good understanding of relationships. I would like to read more from this author.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Some of the experiences could have come right out of my life story. But I guess it could come from any of our youth that lived in those years. It was a free and wild time to be in your 20's. I sit here with a smile remembering some of the good times I experienced.

I cannot put into words how much I enjoyed reading this book. I was completely immersed in the story and loved all three characters equally. It’s very rare to come across a book that captures the atmosphere of an era so perfectly and somehow manages to bottle the very essence of youth to serve it to the reader as if it was the most natural thing to do. It left me with a longing for a carefree life I never had but could have, had I grown up in a different environment. I am about to start on the sequel – the author has put the bar high with this book and I hope the second one just flows from the first.

An amazing and amusing look back on our fav decade!

Whims and Vices is an insightful, sweet, complex story of friendship and love. D. Thrush, tells it in the voice of Max, a college age kid in the early 70s who doesn’t need much in the way of material things, but does require a steady supply of alcohol, free-love, occasional drugs, and friendship. He meets a bartender gal named Molly and she tells him he can stay at her place. What she doesn’t know is that Max’s best friend Sam is one of the all time charmers of the world, a guy who can pretty much seduce anyone with a simple smile. Sam just assumes that he can move in with Max and Molly, and he does. Sam cooks; Molly works and takes care of the guys; while Max worries endlessly about everything.

D. shows remarkable insight into the complexities of the male mind, especially our deepest darkest fears, and our affection for - dependence on - and yet constant need escape from commitments to the opposite sex. She understands male friendships too and the honor code that comes with even the darkest of them. D. gives Max a resilience that turns out to be one of his greatest strengths. I’ll admit that I was very much involved in the story and as worried as Max about all the dangers and possibilities that came with each new day. The book is an accurate picture of the way things were in the seventies, but more than that it’s a chance for readers to develop real friendships with some complex and intriguing characters that they will really care about. I sure hope there will be a sequel.

This review contains spoilers!!
Whims and Vices is a trip down memory lane for me, but not the usual trip that you would expect for someone being born in the 50’s. I was not the flower child that was the norm in this era. I would consider myself the one that watched from afar, analyzed everything, and always wondered what the fuss was all about. To this day I still wonder what the fuss is all about, however, Whims and Vices has shed some light.
Molly, Max and Sam found themselves in a type of love triangle – Molly and Sam, Molly and Max, Max and Sam – but a triangle not only of love, but of best friends. Friends that should last a lifetime, but as most of us know, “People come and go in your life, but some never leave your thoughts” and I often find myself wondering what happened to Shelly, or Shawn or Barbara (these are my friends) and through social media I have been able to find a couple, but some of the names still haunt me to this day.
Molly was the stable one, the one with the job, the one that was more apprehensive, yet would try new mind altering drug experiences, but didn’t let life get in the way. Max was a type of freeloader that would have an occasional job if enough pressure was put on him, who also held reserve to mind altering drugs, but Sam, the wild one, was always up for a party, experimenting, the most unstable of the three. Sam reminds me a lot of my cousin who had the world at his fingertips, brilliant in math and electronics, the engineer brain, but got mixed up in the drug world, traveled to the Haight-Ashbury scene, became hooked on hard drugs and fried his brain. Maybe Sam knew early on that he had a brain tumor so subconsciously he didn’t care what the consequences of hard drug use might bring.
Like Max, “I mourn the friend I carelessly and unintentionally let time and distance take from me”. Max ran away from his perceived trouble in New York, leaving Sam and Molly to be a couple. He never kept in contact. Years later, through social media he reconnected with old friends who led him to an old band member friend and ultimately Molly. Max was too late to be by Sam’s side as he died, as I was too late to be by Barbara’s side when she took her life. I have never been able to forgive myself for not knowing the pain she must have been in to be able to do this. “Lessons learned on your own are much more valuable and enduring”, a lesson I learned years after my friend had passed because I didn’t know until years later this event had even occurred, ultimately because of my own negligence of nurturing friendships. This tragedy has opened a new light in my life to not let time pass without keeping in contact with both friends and family, to help whenever needed, no matter what time or place you may find yourself in, to make it work.
As I mentioned earlier I was never the adventurous one when it came to mind altering drugs and I never could understand why someone wasn’t just happy being themselves. One thing I found contradictory to my beliefs is a scene where the three friends find themselves in the kitchen with Sam having just cooked breakfast. “There was the delicious aroma of food mixed with the sweet scent of pot”. Boy is this wrong for me! To this day I get nauseated at the smell of pot. I believe this is why my life was so different than my peers. It is said that mind altering drugs alter your perception of life. In answer to my own question as to why someone can’t be happy with the way they are, this would be it. If you’re unhappy or believe there is something better out there, this would be a way to experience it.
I really enjoyed Chapter 22. Max had run away to California to make a new start, years had passed and he found himself looking back at life after being a successful realtor, divorced and wondering what happened. Money, “the green pacifier” can be the death of any relationship. We tend to work more and more, spend less time with family and for what? Material things don’t matter. They don’t satisfy “the deep craving we all have within ourselves for meaning”. It becomes a bottomless pit that many never see and Max was able to see after his divorce. What he needed now was a true friend, he needed Sam and Molly. This chapter ties it up. This is where he reunites with Molly, finds out his best friend, Sam, has died and opens new doors.
Max reunited with Molly through social media. I reunited with Shawn (a friend from the 70’s) through social media. Max and Molly are both in a position to start again as are Shawn and I. Our lives are a sequel in the making and I suspect Max and Molly’s will be also.

This book is not something I usually read, but the synopsis caught my interest and once I started I couldn't put it down. I loved the energy and friendship between the main characters (even the times I wanted to grab them and say "what are you doing!?!). They genuinely loved each other and you can see it in some of their interactions. There's a lot of struggle in this book. Struggles with drugs, drinking, infidelity, etc...but there's also the good parts in it too. (And no, I'm not going to tell you the good parts. You'll have to read it for yourself to find out.) This book is pretty much every kid out there who has ever struggled to find themselves while dealing with life. They either just want to party for a while, or they don't know what they want or how to get there. The journey is hard, but the outcome is usually the best.