Review: 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway' by Craig J. Moore

Originally published in 2009 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway' is a stylistically experimental novel written by Craig J. Moore. Set in California, around 1967 and the summer of love, the book is narrated by Joey, and tells of his life aged seventeen, trying to find his place in the counterculture. As part of the growing genre of self-published psychedelic works, which tend to focus on personal, socio-historical narratives 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway' portrays what, arguably, could be called the defining era of popularized psychedelia.

The book is split into three chapters; the first, Down the Rabbit Hole, recounts Joey's introduction into the world of weed, LSD and the alternative lifestyle of the counterculture. The second, The Summer of Neverending Love, she said, covers the hedonism of that now legendary season and the third, Way Down in the Revolution of Wild Flowers, is a resolution, of sorts, on Joey's personal, teenage hopes. Central to these hopes, and to the book, are a series of female relationships, wherein the age-old search for the destruction of virginity is tempered through the characterisations of the females in question.