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70's antinovel that attempts to explain the self-conseptual chaos of early puberty by repeating that very chaos in writing.

The novel is a style of narrative where the components of the story � characters, sequences of events, location in time and space, and so on � are pieced together in a manner which is easy for the human mind to follow. In a sense it mimics our mindset, stringing together the elements in a way that is largely linear and thus allows the reader to recreate the story much as we would reconstruct one from our memory. The antinovel obviously deviates from this, making for a more challenging read yet one which allows for a more malleable presentation, in turn making it possible to explore the topic at hand with more unique perspectives. These are of course not satisfying definitions of either concept, but they are sufficient as an introduction to the deviancies of Truck.

A brief but decent description of these deviancies are given by Dutch, the protagonist, herself: "[I] close my eyes and look at what comes onto the insides of the eyelids. An owl's face." (p. 119) The reader is placed inside that piece of her mind which one could refer to as 'the eye of the consciousness.' This is not our eyes, ears or other sensory organ; what reaches our consciousness isn't raw light in millions of individual rays whose path has bounced them off of areas of atomic density (or 'objects,' if you prefer), but a finished puzzle which our subconscious minds has made from all the individual pieces. Neither is it our memory, which must obviously exist subconsciously since we do not rummage through our mental archives when we realize we've lost a password as much as pray that we will be able to coerce our memory to deliver it to us. The eye of the consciousness is where memory and perception meets, to be observed by our conscious selves. Put this stream of Dutch's observed thoughts into book form then you'll end up with Truck.

But this stream of consciousness is notoriously unreliable due to the fact that we're just getting the images of it all, and it is hard to separate what belongs to the outside reality from what belongs to internal imagination just by watching them fleet past. To Dutch it is all a part of her world of thoughts, to her it makes sense. To us readers it is more difficult as we will have to sort out this distinction between fact and fiction for ourselves. We will have to deal with an unreliable timeline where memories might confuse themselves into the current events. And then there will of course be the spur-of-the-moment topic changes � e.g. the 'owl's face' � which is a part the normal workings of every mind, yet which does disturb the reader's sense of coherence when attempting to make sense of Dutch's tale. Also, the reader should be warned that since we're placed so intimately to Dutch's person we don't get any filters and parts of the narrative can be quite explicit; of course, this just makes the psychological aspect of the tale feel more genuine.

Yet, these obstacles do serve a purpose, chaotic as they may be. Jean Gillis, who's known as 'Dutch' by everyone but her mother, is fifteen and is herself in a somewhat chaotic state. Growing up, going from the state of being a minor to one of being... some kind of unknown amongst that general category 'adulthood,' is not going smoothly for her. She still has a child's body, yet her mindset is steadily maturing, creating an ever greater gap between the physique and the psyche. Taking up the role of a tom boy has so far been her way of dealing with it � at least no one questions her lack of womanhood if they think she's a boy � but this clashes with her infatuation with Heydorf. Heydorf is one of those guys who try to impress others with his carefree demeanour and know-it-all wits, but who is still far too young to actually have either. Dutch realizes this, but follows her heart anyways, and when Heydorf go to Los Angeles to find a way to get rich then she follows him there as well, trucking in his heels. (As a partial yet relevant digression, the nickname Dutch was given to people of German or Netherlands descent, or to someone considered inferior or cheap (e.g. a Dutch treat). Consider the latter etymology, then consider Heydorf's haughty treatment of her, using his last name to indicate a finer breeding while letting Dutch trail after him. Here the names alone actually hint at their roles and how they relate to each other.)

One could label Truck an experimental narrative and experiments, by their nature, can fail. If indeed Dunn intended Truck to be a complete transcript of what is a deeply mental journey, then she fortunately succeeded. The depth of character is almost unparalleled, though Dunn herself put up a worthy challenger when she wrote Olympia Binewski's surreal tale. Truck is, however, not all that similar to Geek Love. They hold an equally high literary quality, and, arguably there are some similarities in Olympia and Dutch's personalities, but beyond that the books are quite different and seems best recommended to readers of different tastes. Geek Love best suits those who enjoy the fantastical and epic, while Truck is far more down to earth with its mundane realism. As for The Attic, Dunn's first book, it seems generally considered to be of the same kind as this one, but this reviewer has yet had the pleasure to verify this.