Brewster - Brossura

Mark Z. Slouka

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1846274990 ISBN 13: 9781846274992

Casa editrice: Portobello Books Ltd, 2013

Riassunto

As an infant, Jon Mosher tragically lost his older brother to a freak accident - something that could have happened to any family. There's nothing he could have done to prevent it, but there it is anyway, that loss echoing in every room and painted on the faces of his parents - German Jews who'd escaped the war - as if to say: you weren't, and aren't, enough. Saddled with this absence, Jon's life has been defined by what's missing and what he lacks; that is, until in high school he befriends wisecracking Ray, a reckless boy with a volatile father, and finds that he can run with the kind of grace and speed possessed by only the most promising track stars in the state. Against the backdrop of the Summer of Love and the encroaching Vietnam War, Jon dreams of ultimately leaving his grey, blue-collar town, but is set on an irrevocable course as the escalating violence of Ray's home life threatens to shatter their bright-eyed plans to escape. Pulled between obligation and desire, Jon's faced with the impossible decision of whether to help, or run. In this magnificent, haunting novel, Slouka brilliantly captures the polarising forces of a working class, hardscrabble ethos and the hopeful vibrancy of the sixties and early seventies. With concise, wise prose, Slouka weaves together a tapestry of family, fate, friendship, and the impossibility of ever, really, leaving home.

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Recensione

A masterpiece of winter sorrow... Slouka's real triumph here is capturing the amber of grief, the way love and time have crystallized these memories into something just as gorgeous as it is devastating. --Ron Charles

It's a gripping, gritty narrative of teenage rebellion in equal parts Bruce Springsteen and Alan Sillitoe, though Slouka's talent is the ability to suggest the dark undertow of suburbia through an immaculately chosen images and simple clarity of phrase. --Guardian

Told in minimalist prose, Brewster is a quietly potent coming-of-age novel. --The Sunday Times

L'autore

MARK SLOUKA is the author of a collection of stories, Lost Lake (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1998); two novels, God's Fool (named as one of the San Francisco Chronicle's and the Washington Post's Books of the Year in 2002), and The Visible World (British Book Award Finalist and one of the Chicago Tribune's Books of the Year in 2007); and a collection of essays, Essays from the Nick of Time (winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for 2010). Three of his essays have been have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays (1999, 2000, and 2004), and two of his short stories have been selected for The Best American Short Stories (2006 and 2011) as well as the PEN/O. Henry Award (2011 and 2012). Mark is a contributing editor at Harper's, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and currently lives in upstate New York.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Portobello Books Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1846274990
• ISBN 13: 9781846274992
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 272