'When Life Was Like A Cucumber'

★★★

Very Well Written

​​With a rather unusual title and a book cover that doesn’t really make me want to pick up the book to read it, I was rather surprised by what met me when I decided to wade through this story.

​This book is fictional but written in the style of a memoir of a young hippie, named Jeff, living the counterculture lifestyle in the late sixties, early seventies. The author mainly writes about Jeff’s interactions with the opposite sex, most of the times while partaking in miscellaneous drugs, experiences hitchhiking from place to place to see friends, family or just while traveling around the world and working, both aspects while also doing drugs. The author also touched upon other areas of Jeff’s life, like his interest in politics since childhood when other children were outside playing as well as politics during the Vietnam War. 

Now, I would not normally read a book like this and probably would not read this particular book again, BUT, BUT, BUT, the author did an ASTOUNDING job writing this book! The writing mechanics of this book were done even better than some books I have bought in Barnes & Noble. The ONLY, mechanical issue I found (just 1), was a missing word, in the last sentence of Chapter 22. There was even a chapter that I absolutely LOVED (Chapter 30!) when I read it because it was just done so well that I saw it like a movie in my head and makes me want to see if this author would write another book similar to that chapter. I would snatch that book up immediately!

The reason I gave this book 3-stars, was for several different reasons:
     •The most immediate thing I started questioning was the plot. Unfortunately, this story doesn’t really have one. It mainly is just the interactions Jeff has and his ‘adventures.’ 
     •There were a few times I read a section and wondered ‘what?,’ because it didn’t make sense in general or didn’t make sense with the other sections of the story I had read, such as when we are introduced to the character Race Track.
     •Lastly, I couldn’t connect with the characters. I could care less what they did and wasn’t really interested in finding out how everything worked out for Jeff. Even though that was the case, the story did elicit irritation on two specific occasions and even made me chuckle a little.

Overall, astounding writing and I want to see what else this author can do.