Thrilling and seductive, Flashout is a suspenseful, beguiling read. In her sophomore novel, Alexis Soloski, a culture reporter for the New York Times and author of Here in the Dark, taps into the dark side of making art and living without boundaries. It's 1972 and Allison, 19 years old and finishing her second year at a prestigious college near New York City, chafes against the rules--of the school, her parents, and society at large--and is ravenous for experience outside the lines. She finds it with Theater Negative, a troupe of outré performance artists crashing together in a filthy apartment in the city whose heyday (marked by arrests for obscenity) already seems past. Allison is drawn in by Peter, the group's cultlike leader, who sleeps with her and a host of other young women who fall under his spell. Despite the creep of addiction, violence, and sexual abuse, Allison is seduced by the idea of making art with absolute freedom and joins the group on a European tour that quickly turns deadly.
The novel alternates the 1972 narrative with one set 25 years later in Los Angeles, Calif., where Allison teaches theater at an exclusive high school. Allison's time with Theater Negative has made her cynical, secretive, and troubled. Worse, her attempt to escape her past and a reckoning for her actions comes to a crashing halt when an anonymous member of the group contacts her, threatening to reveal all. Soloski's prose is lush, hypnotic, and full of shards. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor