Dimensions
130 x 198 x 11mm
Rear-end fluid, battery acid, exhaust hoses, floor jacks and leaky gaskets; a dusty black 1963 Ford Galaxie over by the air pump, torn pin-ups in the compressor room, chainsmoking mechanics listening to a tinny radio - the rust and grease and grime of the gas station, the rhythms of work and talk, are detailed with such precision in Torra's novel that the locality becomes universal.
As Jimi Hendrix and Vietnam rumble on in the background, an Italian-American teenage boy grows up working in his dad's gas station in Massachusetts, awkward with his father and not too hot at mounting snow tires or dismantling engines.
In 'Gas Station' Torra has written an extraordinary and superb coming-of-age novel in the great American blue-collar tradition, and one which has echoes of another working-class son of Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac.
