The Friends of Allan Renner

Often laid back but sometimes excitable, Allan Renner is approaching forty and currently living in Florida in the guest quarters above his parents’ garage. When he’s not working as an online copy editor or as a production assistant on independent films, he often follows world cinema, fills his head with strange accounts of the paranormal, bonds with his dog, or shoots the breeze with his small cadre of friends around the country. It’s through his dealings with these friends that we get to know Renner and how he truly comes into his own.

There’s Akhil, an alcoholic guidance counselor from India who studies cosmology and astrophysics in his spare time, when he’s not busy boozing and reliving his failed courtship. There’s Sadie, an adventurous blond rock singer who relocates to Minneapolis from L.A. after her band breaks up, and who men fight over. There’s Fred, a half-black, half-Jewish filmmaker based in Brooklyn who gets in over his head when he invites the wrong person to an acting audition. There’s Renner’s father, Philip, a poker-playing couch potato, and his mother, Alice, an even-keeled bookworm, both of whom might be in for a rude awakening. There’s Ruby, a mischievous, lovable Havapoo and Renner’s closest companion, who gets Renner and herself into a jam. There’s Carmen, an ex-clubber turned single mother from Lisbon who enters Renner’s life not long before Hurricane Irma makes its way to Florida. And there’s Xynnulu, an alien-human hybrid and soldier of fortune who Renner and Ruby must rely on in order to meet their destiny and discover certain secrets of the universe.

Poignant, funny, and perceptive, Dave J. Andrae’s debut novel, The Friends of Allan Renner, is an entertaining read. It combines adult literary fiction with sci-fi elements, romance, and no shortage of wry cultural commentary intermingled with skilled storytelling.