What We Do Is Secret, Thorn Kief Hillsbery
What We Do Is Secret, Thorn Kief Hillsbery
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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What We Do Is Secret
A Novel

Author: Thorn Kief Hillsbery

Narrator: Nick Walther

Unabridged: 10 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/28/2025

Synopsis

“Why am I a punk? Because I wasn’t anything before, except different. And now it’s like I’m different, but with a vengeance.” It’s been months since the suicide of Darby Crash, L.A. punk rock icon and lead singer of the Germs. He checked out on the same day John Lennon was shot: December 8, 1980. But for Rockets Redglare, it feels like yesterday. Darby was the hot-as-sun center of Rockets’s world. Part ringleader, part god, and all charismatic manipulator, Darby was as close to family as a hustler and street kid like Rockets might ever get. Now, as Rockets amps up for another night looking for tricks and scrounging a meal, Sex Pistols and X lyrics on repeat in his head, he knows he’s come to a turning point—the scene is changing, and nothing’s as easy as it was when Darby brought him into the fold. From the underground clubs to the back of the giant “H” in the Hollywood sign, Rockets and his crew of friends spend the night burning bridges, building new ones, tripping and talking and searching for answers. As the dark gives way to early morning, the punks and the cops engage in their ritual standoff—and Rockets faces the ultimate choice: Should he stay or should he go?

Reviews

Goodreads review by Suki on July 16, 2014

I admit thinking when I started reading this book I was never going to finish, the language is very stylistic and it does take a good few pages to let yourself become immersed, but you have to...this book is unbelievably good. It is one of my favorite books of all time, and I have to say a great inf......more

Goodreads review by Andrea on April 03, 2025

I never fully adjusted to the vernacular used in this book—it threw me off. I found that my eyes just slid over the words and I had to really concentrate while reading. I liked the story, I even liked the style of writing—it was just difficult for me. I like books about the early LA punk rock scene s......more

Goodreads review by Manuela on July 21, 2010

You have to read the book as fast as it's written or thought by the main character, it's a stream of consciousness so it's hard to put it down and start again, personally, I just wanted to read on and on, tripping over words and pages. The writing style is brilliant and unique, capturing form the fi......more

Goodreads review by Kitty on May 11, 2020

Hillsbery makes tremendous points in a punk-rock slam-poet prose, but god if it isn't impossible to read with my dyslexia!......more

Goodreads review by Shahin on March 03, 2021

This book is a contradiction... At times it feels like a 2 star read and at time it feels like a 5 star read. With a unique voice, it posits the reader in the 1980s LA hardcore punk scene, following a day in the life of Rockets Redglare, a homeless gay punk kid set adrift after the suicide of his id......more

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