LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS -- It’s hard to say why I keep reading San Francisco author Jon Boilard. The characters in his fourth work of fiction, a new short-story collection, “Junk City,” out from Livingston Press, are mostly deadbeats and addicts. The guys drink till they black out, sleep with each other’s girlfriends and generally manage to mess up their lives just up to, or sometimes just past, the point of redemption. And they know it.
But here’s the thing: Boilard writes like a predator. His stories grab you by the throat in the first sentence and you have to keep reading out of self-defense.
“The character of Eskimo has been haunting me for a while. Years, in fact,” Boilard said. “And the poems that are attributed to her were based on my own scribblings when I was an undergrad at San Francisco State.”