Review: Looking for Przybylski

Looking for Przybylski by K.C. Frederick

My rating:         Literary Fiction

Ziggy is a former gambling boss fallen on hard times, and when he hears that undertaker Przybylski might have had a hand in his downfall, he sets off on a road trip from Detroit to LA to look for answers. Yet this novel has far more focus on the journey than the destination. Ziggy's bus is waylaid by bad weather and breakdowns, and the colourful characters occupying the other seats have plenty of stories of their own.

For the first half of the book, I was put in mind of what Waiting for Godot might have become, if it had happened to be set on an old Greyhound bus travelling across middle America. While there are snatches of personal stories, characters and places come and go without resolution, and meanwhile Ziggy is basically waiting to draw closer to a goal whose importance he is beginning to question. I wondered whether the similarity of the titles was intentional, and whether Przybylski would ultimately prove as elusive as Godot.

So I was a little disappointed when Ziggy finally starts to find clues to Przybylski's whereabouts - and really unimpressed by their actual meeting, which was simply surreal, in a way that didn't really fit with the down-to-earth style of the rest of the book. I enjoyed Ziggy's journey, and it is very well written, but the ending just didn't work for me.