The setting of Spare Parts is San Francisco, so an image of the Golden Gate bridge seemed appropriate. The background is a much-worked-over beach sunset that (also appropriately, as many of the characters are LGBT folk) blurs out into an intense electric rainbow flag.
Since the series of these books (Thad and Spare Parts) is Principal Parts and the title of this book is Spare Parts – of course, all the chapters and their images have something to do with parts
Alice has her hands full changing from a Texan to a Californian – but that’s the least of her worries. Basically her life is a continuous explosion now, like a million nuclear bombs going off constantly every minute. It’s a little like living on the sun. Tricky to manage, but worth the pain.
Heinekens and the Later Roman Empire and Survival of the Fittest – as well as Clubbing – these are the interests of the single young man in San Francisco.
John Chin’s four compartments of life are all filled this year with farting, laughing men and giggling children. Except the last compartment. And that contains only the entire universe.
Death comes for the circuit party boy also – although not quite as romantically as he does for others.
A bus trip from nowhere to nowhere can sometimes be the connection between a poorly-remembered past and a not-quite-thought-out future – over and over again.
Two melodies, one song – and neither melody gets to decide when it starts, when it stops, or what it sings. And that’s O.K.
Our lives are made up of the small, the insignificant, the unnecessary, the forgotten – they are the most important things – we are them, and they are us.
Anders Flagstad Author Website 