A Review of The
Last Days of Video by Jeremy Hawkins
Not
so long ago there were bright blue Blockbuster video stores seemingly
everywhere. I remember having my own Blockbuster card and renting a couple
videos for the weekend. With the smell of popcorn, the staff recommendations,
the new releases, it was kind of a nice memory. It wasn’t so nice, however, for
the independent video stores of that era, the stores that struggled mightily
against the Blockbuster brand but usually lost in the end. The Last Days of
Video, a novel by Jeremy Hawkins, tells the story of Star Video, a barely
surviving independent video store in a small college town in North Carolina.
The store has the town to itself until a brand new Blockbuster opens just down
the street.
It’s
2007 and Star Video isn’t the place you’d go to find the latest Fast and
Furious installment, but rather where you’d find a nearly forgotten classic
or something from the French New Wave. It’s where you might find Wax, the
hapless owner, and Alaura, his devoted second-in-command. There’s also Jeff,
the freshman, virgin, new hire, and an assortment of other eccentrics,
employees and regulars alike. But all who enter Star Video have one thing in
common, they all love movies no matter what new technology threatens to rub
them out of existence.
If
you’re a fan of the book or movie High Fidelity, or the movie Empire
Records, or simply a reader who also loves movies, then I would highly
recommend this funny, sentimental, first novel from Jeremy Hawkins. Can one be
nostalgic for 2007 -- just eight years ago as I write this? Surprisingly, yes.
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