Glimpses

Music changed Ray Shackleford's life. He's about to return the favor.

Ray makes his living repairing stereos in his upstairs workshop. Like so many others of his generation he's trying to cope with lost ideals and broken dreams. The father he rebelled against for years has just died, and his marriage looks like a demilitarized zone.

Then the strangest things start to happen.

Ray begins to hear music in his head: glimpses of wonderful rock and roll recording sessions that never took place. He doesn't just hear the music—he re-creates it on his tape deck. With the help of the president of a maverick record company, legendary unrecorded albums like the Doors' Celebration of the Lizard and the Beach Boys' Smile become very real bootleg CDs that are transforming the present.

Suddenly Ray is having what feels to him like real encounters with Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson, and others. As his marriage, his work, and even his sanity begin to unravel, Ray finds himself on a reckless quest to live the past as it has never been, to challenge the heroes of a generation to complete their masterpieces, and—finally—to confront the ghosts and demons within himself.

Glimpses is a novel of music, of sexual obsession, and most of all, of self-discovery. Mixing historical fact, informed speculation, and autobiography, it expands fiction into a whole new dimension of reality.

Lewis Shiner's earlier novels have earned him a huge cult following. Now, by far his most ambitious book, this brilliantly original, deeply moving novel defines a generation—and establishes him as one of the most important new voices in fiction.