Side Effects by S. Montana Katz

Side Effects: A footloose journey to the apocalypse is a novel about the post-World War II baby boom generation and the factors that have led to climate catastrophe. The novel provides a portrait of the boomers by following the lives of a zany, idealistic couple and their growing family through the '50s, '60s, '70s. Beginning on a honeymoon motorcycle trip the couple sets the goal of putting down roots in California, the land of wild beauty, abundance, and political activism. The music, art, science, and politics of the era are palpable throughout the book.

About the Author
Montana Katz is a psychoanalyst. She has written two other novels (Clytemnestras Last Day and Living Dolls and Other Women), a play (adapted from Clytemnestras Last Day by the same name), books on psychoanalysis (Contemporary Psychoanalytic Field Theory: Stories, Dreams and Metaphor and Metaphor and Fields: Common Ground, Common Language, and the Future of Psychoanalysis), and two award-winning books on gender bias (The Gender Bias Prevention Book and, with co-author Veronica Vieland, Get Smart: What You Need To Know But Wont Learn In Class About Sexual Harassment And Sex Discrimination). Her writing is situated at the confluence of fact, history and the unconscious.

Reviews
"As the author is a psychoanalyst, you get a sense of the deeper psychological impact that this family has on the world, and vice-versa. Katz has a marvelous way of intertwining history, character, place, and fiction. She is a talented writer who puts her stamp on the baby boom generation in a way that is interesting to learn, eclectic, easy to understand, and most of all, entertaining. Her passage of comparing San Francisco to Mecca is enough to hook you. You're in for an emotional ride." -- Tammy Ruggles, Reader Views
"Any novel that starts off with the protagonists standing on a precipice overlooking the Bay Area and screaming for joy that they had found Mecca is a book I want to read. So will you. Side Effects is a deftly rendered, stream-of-consciousness narrative that provokes, challenges, and unsettles -- a disquieting discourse cued to our time and place." -- Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College
"Following WW II, hope was in the air. Fascism and the Great Depression were vanquished. Young Americans dreamed of a new world of peace and endless prosperity. Montana Katz's new novel Side Effects chronicles the unravelling of those dreams through the lens of one autistic young woman. But Side Effects goes way beyond your traditional coming of age story. Like Katz's earlier novel, Clytemnestra's Last Day, which reimagined classic Greek myths to explore painful issues of sexual violence and human tragedy, Side Effects blows up the traditional coming of age story to explore the unravelling of one family and the creation of a global environmental catastrophe. Side Effects is a poignant story of the toxic forces that have destroyed both the American dream and the global environment. Great writing and political fiction at its best." -- George Winslow, author of Capital Crimes



Book Information
ISBN 9781771835503
Author S. Montana Katz
Format Paperback
Page Count 290
Imprint Guernica Editions,Canada
Publisher Guernica Editions,Canada
Series World Prose
Weight(grams) 353g