Why the Tree Loves the Axe - Softcover

Lewis, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006551033 ISBN 13: 9780006551034

Verlag: Flamingo, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

The brilliant second novel by a new US literary star.

• Caroline, 27, walks out of a marriage and into an old people’s home where she meets cantankerous, lusty octogenarian Billy, who entrusts a secret to her. She goes from his deathbed to a wedding, where she is seduced by a beautiful man who tells her stories of her ex’s antics back home. Bright, buoyant Bonnie, meanwhile, installs herself as Caroline’s new best friend and accompanies her to a picnic that turns into a riot. When it is over, the world’s altered: for Caroline is no longer herself – she must flee being Caroline. We follow her long flight through trauma, fakery and captivity to redemption.
• Jim Lewis’s tale of how to measure love and its loss is a swooningly observant and atmospheric tale of rare resonance.
• Lewis writes about sex, ageing, identity and bereavement with such newness and rightness that his reader is struck dumb.
• Sister, Jim Lewis’s debut, was rightly celebrated; but Why the Tree Loves the Axe betters it and brings him briskly to the very front of the American literary stage.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jim Lewis is the author of two previous books, a novel Sister, and in collaboration with photographer Jack Pierson, a book about Las Vegas, Real Gone.

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“A literary suspense novel that actually delivers – a page-turner that will keep readers guessing till the end, their curiosity fueled as much by the book’s gorgeously inventive imagery as by its seductive plot.”
SARAH FERGUSON, 'NEW YORK TIMES'

“Caroline is a compulsive liar. She ends up in Sugartown, Texas, after fleeing a broken marriage and suffering a car crash, and makes up an identity for herself to get a job. She lives a shadowy fictionalised life as an orderly in a geriatric ward, getting involved witha sinister old man, who confers on her a strange box to deliver, and a soul-mate girlfriend whom she strangely resembles. Sugartown descends into hellish street riots during which Caroline kills a policema, and learns that her girlfriend has died … Jim Lewis deserves a wider audience … The narrative here is modern American Gothic, with a Pinteresque menace, and a nice twist in the tale … Lewis covers a wonderful range of American experiences. Midwest pieties and dreams of a new city on the plain are transformed into a nightmare of social unrest, sinister geriatric decay and necessary lawlessness … wise, lyrical and refreshingly astonishing.”
ADAM PIETTE, 'Evening Standard'

“Caroline’s voice is absolutely believable, vacillating between the extremes of caution and hysteria. The language is lush, and the overall effect is surreal. Lewis manages to transform suburban life in the southern states into a post-gothic world of strange coincidences and vivid visual impressions .. An eerie and atmospheric novel.”
CHRISTINE POUNTNEY, 'Financial Times'

“By releasing the tallest of stories in a rush of rich language, Jim Lewis dazzles you into credulity. An unmissable novel.”
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Flamingo
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0006551033
• ISBN 13: 9780006551034
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar