A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: THE LAY OF LALA LAND BY A.Y. MILES

The main thing that makes The Lay of LaLa Land by A.Y. Miles so immediately and consistently funny is the perfect pitch of authenticity in the young narrator’s voice. We are in the presence of a socially embarrassing, perfectly candid adolescent; but don’t worry, he’s in therapy. Perhaps for wanting to see his mother naked. Okay, his step-mom. The delight of this book is that Lenny Moral (once a Dushoff) is keenly able to discern and discuss the moral differences concealed in such a nuance. As for his father: “Maybe he wanted me to be a psych major so I could be the one to figure out why he was such an asshole.” Also, and not to be discounted, the title is ingeniously constructed to both lead and mislead the reader about the contents. Best to just take it literally.

So, Lenny Dushoff – a most delightfully self-deprecating, intelligent, perceptive but naive young college student en-dormed on an L.A. campus – spends a great deal of his valuable time diligently trying to show you The Lay of LaLa land, and also to be avidly seeking one [sic] himself. Amazing that such a noble endeavor should be so filled with blindsiding if often subtle humor, and that it would provoke so many sudden if involuntary laugh-out-louds from the reader. A.Y. Miles is skilled enough to reproduce the utter inanity of adolescent humor, but with a finesse fine enough to catch the adult reader off his too-serious, maturity-induced, self-congratulatory game. Simply stated: you will laugh your butt off – and then bask in an afterglow of guilty pleasure. But oh, did I not mention the heartrending pathos, the stifling terror, the tragedy? My apologies.