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Chargement... Sugar Street (édition 2022)par Jonathan Dee (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreSugar Street par Jonathan Dee
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Very enjoyable noir about a man on the run. You learn little about what he did, where he's from, you just have him, living quietly day-to-day. ( ) The unnamed narrator arrives in an unnamed city, having ditched everything that might identify him or make him traceable--his phone, his car, his driver's license. All he has is an envelope full of cash, $165,000 more or less, which he calculates is enough to last him until he is no more. He rents an apartment. on the second floor above his landlord, and begins living a modest life. He continues to be careful to avoid places and transactions which might lead to his being identified--no shopping at chain stores, or walking on streets where there might be cameras. His only activity is watching the kids, many of them immigrants, pass by on their way to and from school. We the readers are left wondering: Why is he hiding? What did he do? Will he ever go back to his old life? These questions, and the excellent quality of the writing, were enough to keep me engaged and reading. This is a character study in which the main character is not just escaping something, he wants to totally disappear, as if he never existed. There is a healthy dose of social commentary here, about the ills of our current society, but also a bit of dark humor. (Two examples: "Nothing escapes the world's attention like a poor person." and "If white people had a tombstone, it would read, 'They Stopped At Nothing.'") I really enjoyed reading this (enough that I've gone on to read two more books by this author), though I do feel the "big reveal" implicitly promised by the underlying premise was a bit of a letdown. First Line: "The American Interstate Highway system. Wonder of the twentieth century world." Last Line: "From up close he looks nothing like me at all." 3 stars Short novel about an unnamed man who is trying to escape his past. He is on the road and on the run from … something. He has a finite amount of cash that he plans to use over time to keep him going, as he lives with only the basic necessities. He avoids cameras and carries no identification. He eventually needs to stop running, meets a female landlord, and pays an annual rent with cash. The story is told entirely by the unreliable narrator. His backstory, at least part of it, is revealed in small increments. He is remorseful but also angry. He wants to escape from himself but finds out how difficult that can be. It is engaging in a cynical way. I found the ending strange and vaguely unsatisfying (perhaps that was the point). I did get pulled into this weird book made up of short "chapters" narrated by some unnamed man attempting to exist completely off the grid - not in a remote area, but in some unnamed city. There are hints scattered through the book as to whom this person may be, but it isn't until the end that really he is just a real jerk. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Publishing for the first time with Grove Atlantic, Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated author of seven novels Jonathan Dee delivers a daring, tense, ticking time bomb of a novel about an anonymous white man on the run from his own identity. In Jonathan Dee's elegant and explosive new novel, Sugar Street, an unnamed male narrator has hit the road. Rid of any possible identifiers, his possessions amount to $168,548 in cash stashed in an envelope under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he hits a city where his past is unlikely to track him down, and finds a room to rent from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions. He seems to have escaped his former self. But can he? In a story that moves with swift dark humor and insight, Dee takes us through his narrator's attempt to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence. Having opted out of his material possessions and human connections, the pillars of his new self--simplicity, kindness, above all invisibility--grow shakier as he butts up against the daily lives of his neighbors in their politically divided working-class city. With the suspense of a crime thriller and the grace of our best literary fiction, Dee unspools the details of our unlikely hero's former life and his developing new one in a drumbeat roll up to a shocking final act. Dee has been compared by the Wall Street Journal to authors such as Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan for his expansive, contemporary, social novels; Sugar Street is a leaner, more personal, but still uncannily timely look at the volatile America of today. A risky, engrossing and surprisingly visceral story about a white man trying to escape his own troubling footprint and start his life over. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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