A Novel by Kristopher Reisz

Title: Tripping to Somewhere
Publisher: Simon Pulse, 384 pages
ISBN-10: 1-416-94000-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-416-94000-5
Price: USD 6.99
Release Date: September 26, 2006

What if you could have everything you ever dreamed of: Freedom, invisibility, invulnerability? What if nothing was beyond your reach, if no door was locked to you, if everything that makes life exciting was spread at your feet, ready for you to step up and take? What if you could live without a care in the world, tied to nothing and no one, yet having everything?

Like all our dreams, the Witches' Carnival doesn't exist. Or does it? For Sam and Gilly, the quest is more than just an idle fancy. Spurred on by Meek, the crazy homeless street preacher with the undead crow, the two teenage girls take off for Atlanta with a horde of stolen cash, in search of the impossible. But are they willing to cross the line that separates them from the new world they long for?

Chasing the dream across the ocean, they subsequently find themselves illicitly in London, drugged out of their gourds and reveling in the decadence that is the reward of having no rules at all. But living like ghosts requires a commitment, a commitment that will test both their resolve and their friendship to their utter limits.

Tripping to Somewhere is, for me, the ultimate nostalgia headtrip. Reminiscent of the hippie movement in its psychedelic heyday, it combines 60s Counterculture laissez-faire with modern Goth Angst and teenage ennui. It's a visceral roller coaster ride of deep friendship and torn loyalties, of powerful desire and questionable motive, of demanding rules and careless lawlessness. Of gaining and losing. Of becoming and ending.

This is existentialist writing at its best.

With vibrant description, Reisz deftly makes his scenery come alive. The reader is swiftly and completely immersed in the action, in the noise and the smoke and the thrill, and becomes caught up with Gilly and Sam as they make their dizzying way through tormented Paradise. It's a kaleidoscope the reader gladly puts to the eye. Because deep inside, we all want what these two teenage girls want.

We want the Carnival to be real.