Inaugural novella, Echo Boom, by Jameson Ketchum has landed, with music journalist, publicist and Hopecore Magazine columnist Ketchum taking us on a diarised journey through the words and mind of fictional “writer” Edward Caspian.
An over thinker to the end, Caspian, guides the reader through his twenty-nine year friendship with his friend, Giles Green, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and explores the way Caspian deals with dying and mortality. The novella, then, offers up lots of themes to think about: drug use, addiction, lost love, and death and funerals.
Ketchum started Echo Boom when he was in college, and the finished novella retains many of the themes and ideas he initially set out to write about. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Caspian’s friend Green is a musician, though we aren’t supplied with any great detail about life as a musician; Caspian, after all, is a writer – albeit not the successful writer that everyone planned for him to be. Instead, he works for Hartford Mowers, and spends his days waiting for retweets, attending strangers funerals and listening to the Moonlight Sonata.
Echo Boom reads with a dark cloud hanging over it as Caspian waxes nostalgically about his dying friend, and their relationship. Ultimately, it’s a short, but well-written, book that will make any reader pause a moment to ponder about life and love. You should definitely check out the suggested soundtrack at the end too.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Echo Boom by Jameson Ketchum is available now as an eBook on Amazon
