22571876Do you remember the days when you had to get the video store before it closed so you wouldn’t be charged a late fee, or how about remembering to rewind the VHS tape before you put it back in the box?  If you don’t then those not so distant memories will come back to you once you read Jeremy Hawkins novel The Last Days of Video.

You’ll ask yourself how the heck we put up with that when most of us can now just download the movie we want and never have to leave our house. We can even do it over our phones. A video store seems so quaint with its movie buff clerks, art sections and yes, the corner of the store with the faded curtain and their dirty movies.

Mr. Hawkins novel goes back to those days of 2007 (I know, was it that short a time ago?)  We get to meet a sad sack misanthrope owner of Star Video named Waring Wax who pretty much is stuck in his video store where he is rude to anybody he doesn’t like and sits in the back of the store in a place he calls the African Queen and watches movies and drinks his misery away.

Alaura who is second in command at the store is in her 30’s and has been working there for a while. She makes excuses for herself of why she still works there and always seems to go for the wrong guys.  The other character Jeff is the college kid working hard at the store who just wants to be liked and getting laid wouldn’t hurt either.

Now Mr. Hawkins puts these characters all together and adds the drama of a Blockbuster moving in literally down the street from them.  They try to come up with ways to attract customers, but when you have a guy like Waring being a nightmare to everybody, the rest of the store looks for ways to keep Star Video up and running.

When it looks like Blockbuster is going to win the video store war a famous Hollywood filmmaker who is a former local resident is there to save the day by making a movie in their town and having a fundraiser to keep the store open.  Now there is no sense in spoiling how it all turns out but let’s just say that Waring makes movie time lemonade out of the lemons that were served to him in life.

The Last Days of Video is a warm bucket of popcorn. Sit back, put your feet up and enjoy.