Bright Lights, Medium-Sized City

by Nathan Holic

Orlando, Florida. Summer of 2009. The Magic are steamrolling through the NBA playoffs, but your life is falling apart. For years you were told that Orlando was the city of the future. Every new high-rise condo and sparkling subdivision confirmed this. Now the boom years are over, and your fiancé is gone. Your house-flipping partner emptied the bank account, sold off the staging furniture, and skipped town. You're an abandoned man with an empty McMansion you can't afford, and a dozen properties you can't sell. What's your next move, big guy? Bookended by a choose-your-own-adventure story and a final exam, Bright Lights, Medium-sized City is a formally inventive city novel in the tradition of The Bonfire of the Vanities. Bright Lights follows Marc Turner, a toxic male and hapless house-flipper caught in Orlando's collapsing housing market. Through text, comic panels, and watercolor illustrations, Nathan Holic's third novel shepherds readers from the glitz of downtown block parties to the grit of the Bithlo school bus races, with a spiraling detour in which the spirits of Orlando's past confront Marc and force him to realize the danger of his own ambitions.

615 pages, Hardcover

Published December 10, 2019

About the author

Nathan Holic lives and writes in Orlando, Florida, where he teaches writing courses at the University of Central Florida, and drives from 7-Eleven to 7-Eleven in search of the perfect fountain-poured Diet Coke.

He is the author of the novel American Fraternity Man (Beating Windward Press) and the novella The Things I Don't See (Main Street Rag), and he is the editor of the annual anthology 15 Views of Orlando (Burrow Press), a literary portrait of the city featuring short fiction from fifteen Orlando authors. He also serves as the Graphic Narrative Editor at The Florida Review.

Holic's short fiction has appeared in a number of print journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Iron Horse, The Portland Review, The Apalachee Review,and the young adult collection Daddy Cool (Artistically Declined Press); his work also appears online at Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Barrelhouse, and a number of other web sites.

His comics and graphic narratives include the serialized adaptation of Alex Kudera's novel "Fight For Your Long Day (available monthly at Atticus Review), and "Clutter," a story structured as a home décor catalogue (available at Nailed Magazine). Other comics, which have appeared in Welter, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Palooka, and the anthology The Way We Sleep (Curbside Splendor Press), have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews

[Andria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading a 600+ page novel about my hometown, the place I have lived for 33 years, a book that took the author 10 years to write, only the third book I have ever encountered about Orlando, and I log on to see that less than a dozen people have bothered leaving a review.

Ironically that's what the book is about... Does anyone in this city even care about it? Is it anything more than just an empty shell for transplants from across the country to project their hopes and dreams onto? A place to part and parcel and flip and exploit? Why is this city, one of the world's most popular family-friendly vacation destinations, "a 'Douchebag' and 'Stupid Bitch' nexus" all of them "pulled here like insects to a bug zapper"? What about this city inspires such vitriolic hatred that every Orlando-centric forum and chat room is filled with dozens of trolls who have briefly lived here and left but can't seem to stop talking about it?

Holic has managed to put words to feelings I've never been quite able to articulate, and there are so many, living in a place like this. The feeling of loving a city that will never love you back, is perhaps incapable of love, still an inhospitable swamp under all the pixie dust and polish. The feeling I get every single time one of my out of state friends sends me another "Florida Man" headline. The feelings that keep me awake at night wondering if a life dedicated to living in and loving this city amounts to anything at all. What it feels like to struggle every day to make the right choices and try to be a good person in a place that often seems so at odds with the very concepts of goodness and trying.

I found the setting to be strangely soothing, even while I relived all the heartbreak and emotional turmoil of the 2008-2009 Orlando Magic season. This cycle has repeated itself before, and will again. As we find ourselves and our economy on the precipice of another 2009, I'm reminded that life goes on. If you really want to understand Orlando, if you REALLY want to "get it"... This is the book to read.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a quirky, eccentric, fun love/hate letter to Orlando. Right from the start, with the opening "Choose Your Own Adventure" you know this book is going to be something different than what you typically see out there. The book is filled with Marc's (our protagonist) self-deprecating wit, cartoons and quirky illustrations, and vivid details about life in Orlando.

I've lived in Orlando for 17 years now and this book perfectly captures the emotions of living in a place like this. Holic brought to the surface feelings I didn't even know I had. In some ways I found this book to be profoundly sad, maybe just in realizing why I feel the way I feel about living here. When I moved here, I fell in love with this city. It was the first time I had ever felt so at home in a place and I have resisted leaving many times over the years. However, the shine has slowly tarnished on me and Orlando's relationship and in more recent years I have struggled to decide how I feel about my city today. The ever present bulldozers flattening every inch of green to be found. The angry, hostile drivers willing to maim themselves to get 2 cars ahead in the parking lot that is I4. Watching nearly all of my close relationships fizzle out as people migrate out of Central Florida to other, kinder places. For years now, I've struggled with the desire to leave this madness for a quieter, hurricane-free life; yet something always pulls me back to this place that has wrapped its invasive vines around my heart and won't let go.

Holic feels this and he makes his reader feel it too. As I read this book, I wondered if it would be as powerful for someone unfamiliar with Orlando, or if the allure was more specific to local readers. I don't think I've ever read a book that was SO MUCH about a place as this one. It really took me back to 2009 and reminded me of all the things that have changed in the decade since.

If I had a critique, it would be the You Are Not You section. While this part was interesting and different, it dragged on a bit for me. I kind of got lost in this section for awhile and sort of trudged through it.

All in all, this book is creatively written, fun, and different. I would definitely recommend it - especially to all my 'pre-transient' friends who have not yet fled for greener pastures. =)

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Local Orlando, Florida guy puts some characters into the "characterless conurbation of congested freeways and parking lots" (and theme parks and foreclosed homes) and illustrates with some whimsical drawings.

[Cordelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange book. Apparently a parody of "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerney, which I haven't read. So I cannot comment on that.

This book is constructed from five books - each of a different style. It starts with Book 1, a "Choose your own adventure" book. What a lot of fun, I thought, as I was directed back and forth through the book. Another of the books consisted of a series of vignettes. And so on through the book.

I thought it was an interesting concept. I'm usually a big fan of unusual writing structure and styles. But somehow this did not really work. Perhaps it was too long and confusing to totally hold my attention.

The book was well written. There were great cartoons throughout the book. It was a lot of fun, but somehow it didn't really grab me.

Thank you to Edelweiss, the publisher and the author for sending me this ARC.

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Orlando novel with highly original hybrid content, Bright Lights, Medium-Sized City was a ten-year project, and it's easy to see why it took so much time and care to create this book.

[Shalom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Works on some innovative structures, in order capture the ennui and desperation of American suburban sprawl. But mostly self-involved, a bit vapid, and drags on too long.