The Gold Coast (Magill Book Reviews)

Set in Southern California’s Orange County, THE GOLD COAST paints an entirely too-believable picture of an over-developed twenty-first century: Endless miles of double-deck freeways jammed with cars; shopping malls-cum-cities the equivalent of several fifty-story buildings spread over a thousand acres. Even the nearby national forest has been leveled to make way for suburbs and their accompanying gas stations and convenience stores.

At the center of the novel is Jim McPherson, unfocused, would-be poet, part-time junior college teacher. He lives from party to party, consuming gargantuan amounts of designer drugs while engaging in meaningless sex. His father, Dennis, sincerely believing he is making nuclear warfare obsolete, builds space-based weapons for the air force. The two men are at a complete impasse, yet both share a deep discontent with their lives. Jim chooses self-gratification as his means of escape; Dennis chooses despair. Then Jim is invited into the revolutionary underground. He jumps at the chance to make the world a better place by destroying the facilities of companies working on space weapons, heedless of how his actions will affect those around him. Even violence, however, cannot fill the void in Jim’s life.

THE GOLD COAST is not an optimistic book. It laments the past when the cry for “more homes, more jobs, more profits, more cars, more money, more weapons, more drugs, more real estate, more freeways” went unchecked. Few of the characters are likable. Yet the novel does serve as a warning that heedless “progress” will surely lead to a world of alienation, a world in which the individual no longer has the power to control his destiny.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXIV, February 15, 1988, p. 974.

Kirkus Reviews. LV, December 15, 1987, p. 1706.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. March 13, 1988, p. 1.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIII, April 24, 1988, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXII, January 8, 1988, p. 74.

Washington Post Book World. February 28, 1988, p. 8.

Washington Post Book World. June 26, 1988, p. 15.