Kick It Till It Breaks
By Ira Robbins
In his first novel, Ira Robbins satirizes the foibles and fanaticism of ’60s radicalism. The dark humor of Kick It Till It Breaks is tempered by affection and respect for those who devoted themselves to ending the war in Viet Nam. Ydinia Ochreman is the leader of the Plumbers, a pre-Watergate organization engaged in watery terrorism; her travels and exploits shape the story, which involves a colorful cast of dubious characters, including the incompetent FBI agent on her trail, a pacifist protest leader with a complicated agenda, a cranky peg-legged bar owner, an Irish atheist on a quest to end organized religion whose son kills people for it and a confused loser from Memphis who gets lost in London and finally finds a way to live. Rich with period detail, slang and settings, Kick It Till It Breaks is both a fond epic of long-ago times and a stick in the eye of anyone with too idealized a recollection of the era.
Published 2009. Paperback and Kindle both available in the Bookshop.
$20.00
Paperback ISBN 978-0-9842539-1-3 / eBook 978-0-9842539-0-6
“I can think of a couple [of books] that more people should have heard of than most likely have: the two self-published novels by the rock critic Ira Robbins. The subject of Kick It Till It Breaks is similar to that of Phillip Roth's American Pastoral (see below under ‘Overrated, not good, sucks, waste of time, boring and stupid’) – it is in fact the book that Roth might have written if he were capable of actually writing rather than spitting out words like watermelon seeds. Marc Bolan Killed in Crash, based on Ira's considerable experience as a journalist covering the British punk rock scene, is possibly even better. It also contains more British slang than the combined total of all books published by Cambridge and Oxford.” —Anton Alterman in The Lamppost