Never Mind Nirvana
by Mark Lindquist
Villard

Do we need yet another book about a thirtysomething white male struggling to find deeper meaning in life? Probably not, but in "Never Mind Nirvana" third-time novelist Mark Lindquist infuses the tired form with enough plot twists, clever phrasings and music nerd minutiae to keep things interesting.

Lindquist's protagonist is Pete Tyler, former lead singer of Morph, a fictional proto-grunge band that broke up after one album. Pete now rocks the mic as a deputy prosecutor, and his latest job is to convict current Seattle rock star Keith Johnson of raping an 18-year-old girl.

While this element would make a decent enough novel in and of itself, Lindquist interweaves the courtroom drama with Pete's seemingly doomed romantic escapades. Pete simultaneously chases the dream of Beth, a girl he shacked up with back in his Morph days, as well as relationships with his on-and-off stripper girlfriend Winter and a Sub Pop record label executive named Esmé. When Pete remarks to his sister partway through the novel that he's decided to get married, but he's not sure to whom, the reader's guess is as good as Pete's.

So what we have then is a well-written novel that's part John Grisham and part Nick Hornby. While Lindquist, a real-life prosecutor, can capture the wheeling and dealing of his profession better than most, his true talents lie in his Hornby-like ability to analyze situations and people with tremendous verve and wit.

"Pete is willing to take on an incumbent if necessary, but he knows this can be expensive and time consuming, so he's waiting for an open seat," Lindquist writes of one of Pete's many, many romantic projects.

Much like Hornby's "High Fidelity," this book scores most of its points with wry observations about sex and dating, clever metaphors, in-depth knowledge of American rock music and great dialog.

An early conversation between Pete and Esmé plays like an episode of Rock & Roll Jeopardy, with Pete asking questions like, "Who drove the Melvins' van?" (Kurt Cobain) and "What was Duff McKagen's band before Guns N' Roses?" (The Fastbacks).

Lindquist does stumble a bit. His biggest offense, aside from the book's lame title, occurs just before Pete lands the Johnson case. He has an incident with a drunken teen-age girl he picks up at a bar. Lindquist's hero "does the right thing" and helps the girl get home, but when Pete gets assigned the rape case, it's pretty transparent that we're all supposed to think something along the lines of, "Dude, that could have happened to Pete!" The book doesn't need this.

Nor do we need all of Lindquist's extensive musical chronicling. "The Replacements' Let it Be, circa 1986." Circa? Just say when the album came out.

But it's easy to overlook "Never Mind's" slight faults, when phrases like, "Pete and many of his cohorts believe there is nothing more important or moving than a good rock-and-roll song, but fortunately this belief goes largely unspoken" are just around the corner. That line, which immediately follows the first "circa offense," nails on the head the essence of Lindquist's novel. As much as it's steeped in music, "Never Mind Nirvana" doesn't forget that it's the story of a belated coming of age, as well as a quest for intimacy in a city dominated by the cold, homogenizing influence of Microsoft and Starbucks.

File under Hip.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)