The great novels of the gutter (think Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and Kerouac’s Subterraneans) share the following characteristic: their narratives move from despair to hope, from fallen state to redemption. If this seems too Christian, then substitute a movement from chaos to meaning. The gutter novel typically takes its readers on a journey through the prisms of hell – emotional, physical, and psychological – to a new understanding.

Toronto writer Michael Holmes’ debut novel, Watermelon Row, fits into the above category on account of its swirling brutality. Like Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, however, its paucity of realization is its ultimate downfall. While Holmes succeeds in creating a tale of sound and fury, he fails to signify a renewed world order that can be pulled from the chaos.

Watermelon Row follows three male protagonists (Peter, early-20s; Scott, late-30s; and Ed, mid-70s) through a 24-hour period during which each of their hellish lives swings from bad to worse, and then toward an almost coincidental resolution. The local strip club, which all three frequent, links the men and their stories. The characters use machine-gun profanity and share a penchant for abusing just about anyone who dares to get close to them. Emotional reactionaries, Holmes’ protagonists run on automatic pilot, the nerve endings of their damaged personalities exposed for all to see. The story, like the writing, is overly literal and lacking in imaginative power. It was Shelley who said that we need darkness to make the stars shine bright. Readers who persist through the nihilism will find little spark of meaning in this novel’s multiple conclusions.