Ecstasy of Fumbling
A Musician's Struggle With Adolescence

By Mark Stewart-Jones
1998
ISBN: 1-85776-240-1
246 p.
$21.95 Paper

---

It is 1974. Steven is 14 and troubled. As he wavers between childhood and finding a suitable method of prolonging it indefinitely, he discovers music and Julie. At an age when his innocence was his "undeniable right to believe in magic," Steven acquires a bass guitar and joins a group. By this means he will transcend his ordinariness and simply await an inevitable and perfect future. In spite of delicate adolescent pride, "artistic differences" and their inability to actually play their instruments, the group stumble towards their first gig. Adolescence is all about the desire for immediacy. In this gloriously complex and painfully funny novel Mark Stewart-Jones highlights the power and the insufficiency of this desire.

Return to main page of Trans-Atlantic Publications