Customer Reviews

All Flowers Die

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Andrew Stone is a wonderful writer but he also must have spent years in the music business. As a professional musician, I can testify that Mr. Stone's experiences precisely portray a behind-the-scenes view of both the struggling and the successful rock band. This rare accuracy helps make the book's characters and their actions much more believable.

Music is serious and personal to the dedicated artist but is often silly and shallow to others as a topic of discussion. This book shows just how passionate artists can be about their music, but it maintains a much deeper, more important focus that should hold any reader's attention. Mr. Stone's work reveals the emotions and complexities of some extremely realistic characters and the book is far from being just another rock and roll tale. I think that he is wise to paint this picture on a canvas that he apparently knows well. However, the power of his writing becomes evident in "Phiz" and the other characters rather than in their surroundings.

Unusually brilliant observations of human behavior and well-developed, interesting situations make this book a great read!

Throughout the entire novel, I thouroughly enjoyed Andrew K Stone's style of writing. This book would be great for anyone who is a significant of a musician or any passionate, driven professional. This book helped me understand my friend, and his career values. Although I disagree with the character Dale's values and some of the themes of the book, it definately helped me understand a complicated mind. I think anyone who reads it should take it with a grain of salt... This book is a prime example that from chaos comes clarity.

This book had a weak story and was poorly written. I did not find it the least bit interesting. It has an adolescent dialouge similiar to "Catcher in the rye." I could not wait to finish it and move on to something else. Rather than handing it off for my wife to read I tossed it in the trash. The other reviewers may be family members ?? I assure you most readers will finish this book with a great big "Who cares?" I ordered it off Amazon and unfortunately couldn't read that the author has written an episode of "Golden girls" This would have disuaded me from wasting my time. *Recommend Empire Falls*

Having grown up in the New England area during this musical time
period, this story brings back many fond memories of my musician
friends trying to break nationally. Author Stone has a way of really making the journey come alive.

I'm typically not one to post reviews--in fact, this is my first--but after reading those posted here and reading the book, I felt compelled to do so if for no other reason than to provide an alternative viewpoint on the story.

While I liked the message and appreciated the author's obvious passion for writing, I found the prose to be choppy and the story to be a bit underdeveloped. To me, it read like a first or second draft, not a finished, polished work. In places, the writing just tried too hard. That frustrated me because in other places he conjured up vivid imagry or used great metaphores. And then he'd throw out a cumbersome sentence or bit of narrative and completely trip me up. It was especially frustrating because I thought he had an interesting and creative story concept, but that his development fell short. Ultimately, I am reminded of something another author once said, "Edit, edit, and then edit again."

I picked up "All Flowers Die," by Andrew K. Stone, not knowing what to expect. That turned out to be a healthy frame of mind. No aspect of this book was contrived or predictable. It had me guessing at points, and I guessed wrong. I was more shocked and surprised at the end of "All Flowers Die" than I have been at any novel in "thriller" or "mystery" genres.

This is less a book about rock n' roll, and more a bueautiful story of an undying childhood imagination, and friendship. The music scene backdrop enriches the story, but the genuine friendship between Kevin and Phiz is what seperates "All Flowers Die" from most of the other books out there. I have read it twice.

Stone's All Flowers Die is testament to the notion that many of us think we know someone absolutely and completely, yet the truth is is that we only assume to understand the depth of a person- even your best friend. From the first chapter, I was hooked by the narrator's perceptions and impressions of his world. Beginning from his youth, the narrator introduces us to what at first appears to be his ordinary existence, one which is dotted with unique events as well as some interesting friends. However, the landscape of the text transforms as Kevin (the narrator) emerges from childhood to adolescence, alongside his painfully honest and often eccentric friend, Dale.

For the two friends, home becomes an apartment in Boston during the quintessential underground music era of the 1980's. Add to the mix the intensity of Dale's desire to share his almost iconoclastic vision with the world through his music with Kevin's self-doubt and apprehension, and you have a powerful coming of age story.

Andrew Stone weaves a tale that reveals the viscera that is the realm of rock n' roll and manages to maintain the sense that there is much more to the characters that meets the eye. Whether it's the grit and grime of city streets, the stale, beer-slicked floor of a club floor, or the evolution of two very different individuals that makes a novel memorable, All Flowers Die will leave a long-lasting impression on your mind.

From the very first page of All Flowers Die by Andrew K. Stone I was drawn to the character of Dale Tarleton. Immediately we care about this precocious boy who is always asking, always seeking to understand and examine everything in his world, to the annoyance, bewilderment, and consternation of his friends, family, and teachers. What happens to Dale and his good friend Kevin as they grow older is the subject of this novel. Dale/Phiz has a secret he is carrying which burdens him and affects everything he does. I highly recommend this book to all who love reading and vibrant, unforgettable characters.

All Flowers Die

This first novel by Andrew K. Stone is a quick and captivating page-turner that melts away under your fingers. Stone's prior work in television scripting adds richly to a real and vivid sense of dialogue between clearly differentiated characters, and his years in the music scene in Boston bring those portions of the book to life.

The theme is of friendship, coming of age, and vision as told through the eyes of Kevin as he ventures through the years with his fascinating friend Dale Tarleton (Dale later adopts the name Phiz.) We follow the boys from boisterous childhood through the college years. Phiz is an idealist who sees the world a bit differently from everyone around him, a questioner and a thinker who discovers his life mission early on, although Kevin and the reader see it slowly unfold and culminate in the book's ending. The foreshadowing is masterfully done, reminiscent of A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving.

A game on a tire swing which the boys christen "reach for the stars," the untimely death of a stuttering grammar school teacher in front of the class following one of Dale's more outlandish questions, the cloudy eyes first manifested in Dale's father and later in Dale all hint at the book's true story. They are wonderful in retrospect, as we follow hints and emotions to the conclusion. I was left questioning whether the cloudy eyes image meant literally a life view of "clouds in the eyes" similar to rose colored glasses, or whether the cloudy of eye saw the world too clearly, were not quite of this world. It is a powerful question to be left with, and generates wonderful discussion.

One of the most pleasant surprises is how easily the reader is pulled into personal memories, again due to simple direct descriptions that hit home. Some examples of zoning in with ease to a more or less universal memory:

"For some reason--even though we never used then--adolescent boys in the 1970s had to carry black combs."

"Our classroom had the antiseptic smell and freshly painted walls on the first day. The virginal chalkboard faced us blankly while its wooden ledge unsuccessfully hid the unused sticks of chalk--powdery bullets of education."

"I was a skinny kid who wasn't the least bit athletic; instead, I worked on the yearbook staff. The coolest thing about me was my defiant refusal to wear a Members Only jacket."

"Streaks of gray ran like indiscriminate cracks through her mahogany hair."

"I stared at her; spiders of anticipated fear crawled behind my eyes, taunting them into blinking."

The examples are countless, but will hopefully begin to give an idea of Stone's unique descriptive style. The best testament may be to click on the first few pages of the book, which can be viewed on line. The first page alone should be more than enough to draw you into the spell that is the "optiontunist" Universe.