Writer Hillel Wright's seedbed of ideas, fertilized in the work of American giants like Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe and William Burroughs, also owes something to the English sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock.
On the fringes of the main plot are allusions to the criminal underworld, psychic transports and elements of the supernatural. The complex narrative incorporates stories within stories, some incidental enough to flare and fizzle, others gaining more grist and body. At times, the narrative can seem experimental in its casual connection to form and development and the free riffing of text, but the digressions and structural freedoms are always fruitful.
"River Road" consists of seven inter-linked stories that can be read independently or in the wholeness of a novel. Much of Wright's fiction is set in the affluent districts on the Tokyo side of the Tamagawa River, an area where those who enjoy an almost Babylonian wealth are only a stone's throw away from the blue tarpaulin shelters of the impecunious, who make the riverbank their home.