I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive - Brossura

Earle, Steve

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1846555086 ISBN 13: 9781846555084

Casa editrice: Harvill Secker, 2011

Riassunto

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams - not just in the figurative sense, not just because Doc was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because Doc is rumoured to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc is himself wracked by addiction. Having lost his licence to practise medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound.

But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighbourhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost - who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history and a marvellous novel in its own right, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Steve Earle brings to his prose the same authenticity, poetic spirit, and cinematic energy he projects in his music. I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is like a dream you can't shake, offering beauty and remorse, redemption in spades" (Patti Smith)

". . . a doctor, a Mexican girl, an Irish priest, the ghost of Hank Williams, and JFK the day before he dies. This subtle and dramatic book is the work of a brilliant songwriter who has moved from song to orchestral ballad with astonishing ease" (Michael Ondaatje)

"A rich, raw mix of American myth and hard social reality, of faith and doubt, always firmly rooted in a strong sense of character" (Charles Frazier)

"Steve Earle writes like a shimmering neon angel." (Kinky Friedman)

"With this book Earle seems to have provided as good an explanation as any for the morbid appeal of country music. To devotees such as Doc, (Hank) Williams's songs are a kind of cosmic sponge, capable of absorbing any amount of human misery before pouring it all back "in that heartrending wail that got down in your bones like a cold wet day". And though the novel comes no closer to establishing the facts of Hank Williams's death, it certainly reveals a good deal of truth behind it" (Alfred Hickling Guardian)

Descrizione del libro:

From celebrated musician Steve Earle comes a novel imagining the life, addiction, and redemption of Doc Ebersole as he is haunted by his former patient, Hank Williams.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvill Secker
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846555086
• ISBN 13: 9781846555084
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 256