Watch Me Go - Couverture rigide

Wisniewski, Mark S.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1410479625 ISBN 13 : 9781410479624

Editeur : THORNDIKE PR, 2015

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

Praise for Watch Me Go:

“Mark Wisniewski’s finely observed Watch Me Go... is a good story smartly told, whose characters learn that love and forgiveness are much better things to chase and catch than the empty promises of gold, good luck and false glory." —The Wall Street Journal

“Like many great novels, Wisniewski’s shows that compassionate love, as unpredictable as it can sometimes be, is the most fitting answer to human corruption and menace. A masterwork of technique, theme, and style, Watch Me Go will stay with readers long after they’ve put the book down.”— The Iowa Review

“Full of cinematic thrill, speed, and fate...a page-turning book...Wisniewski does an excellent job writing about the fury and hunger that arise out of marginality and lack of power, and that energy resonates throughout the book...It’s rare to read a story with morals that doesn’t feel like a morality tale. Read this book.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

"Wisniewski sifts the scum, unflinching. He shies neither from the battered dreams of a grandstander nor from the stench of a bush-league stable...it’s Wisniewski’s pervading compassion, his understanding of hardship, which places Watch Me Go on the topmost shelf of horse racing novels."—The Kenyon Review

“Wisniewski artfully brings to life the hardscrabble and crooked lives surrounding the Finger Lakes horse racing track. He shows us how racial prejudice still runs rampant in American life and how justice is sometimes meted out in the most circumstantial of ways. But perhaps most important, he brings to light the countless ways that love—romantic and familial—is as complicated as it is essential...Wisniewski is a sure and smart writer, and his philosophy never gets in the way of his story, which is suspenseful and original and wholly unpredictable.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[C]hannels the best of [Wisniewski’s] profluent short fiction... Watch Me Go feels particularly apt to our national present, when police procedure is under constant scrutiny...Wisniewski’s prose burns forward, but he knows when to slow the pace.” —The Millions

“Outstanding...Wisniewski deftly alternates perspectives and narrative threads... just what fans of literate and nuanced daylight noir will relish.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"...wonderfully raw and gritty..." —Booklist

"Pure, muscular storytelling ... irresistible." —Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

“Mark Wisniewski is a damn good writer.” —Ben Fountain, New York Times–bestselling author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

“With Watch Me Go, Mark Wisniewski has constructed a fabulous noir that touches on the third-rail of American life and the inside rail at the track. His voice is down-to-earth and sharp, delivering swift, salty pages concerning murder and jails, justice and damaged souls.” —Daniel Woodrell, PEN award winner and Edgar nominated author of Winter’s Bone

“A smart, richly observed noir thriller, located somewhere on the border between Richard Price and Daniel Woodrell. It’s full of double-crosses and secrets, yes, but Watch Me Go is also thoughtful, complex and compassionate in its depiction of these visceral characters and their circumstances.” —National Book Award Finalist Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply

"The structure of the novel allows for the kind of tension associated with a thriller, adding an element of mystery to a narrative that never has its conclusion in doubt, as well as giving each beat in the plot its own menacing little cliffhanger.... [Wisniewski's] storytelling owes more to the gothic Americana of Carson McCullers than the sharp, twisty unphilosophical page-turners of Donald E. Westlake.... Wisniewski capably provides two distinct, disparate narratives and plays them off one another to great effect, with the form and the intensity of storytelling.... Wisniewski looks at love, hope, and desperation through the lens of gambling: how a mistery world can make gamblers of us all and how we order and anticipate our losses to minimize pain." —Winnipeg Free Press

“Wisniewski has created an enthralling thriller centered around a pair of vulnerable individuals teetering on the brink of survival. This is an irresistible story told with smart prose and thoughtful narratives. It is at once a meditation on love, loss and the price of justice.”—Shepherd Express (Milwaukee)

“A compelling and gritty work of literary noir.” —Largehearted Boy

“A timely, gritty, poignant novel.” —Heidi Pitlor, series editor of The Best American Short Stories and author of The Birthdays

“A gritty tale of mystery and desire, it breaks from the gate with power and grace and never falters. This book has legs.” —Pulitzer Prize Finalist Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever

Watch Me Go is urgent, wrenching, and—as the two entwined narratives pick up speed and consequence—riveting. The momentum carries us through to revelations about family and redemption . . . A deft and sure novel.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred-Year House and The Borrower

"A deeply-felt story of the way two people, a young Black man and a White woman, are damned equally by the choices they make as well as the circumstances forced upon them. The novel unfolds with the pace of a thriller, leading us through the world of gambling, horse-racing, and prisons both real and imagined, all told in voices that ring true from start to finish.” —Ru Freeman, author of A Disobedient Girl and On Sal Mal Lane 

"Mark Wisniewski's gift for inhabiting his characters, body and soul, is more than impressive—it smacks of the dark arts, and Watch Me Go is scary good.  Seductively plotted, crazily well-written, and wholly gripping, this book at once gallops headlong and stops you in your tracks with a truths-per-page quotient that is off the charts—laser-fine insights into how we love, leave, gamble, lose, redeem, and strive once more for love.  Get a good grip on the reins, reader: Watch Me Go is one hell of a ride." —Tim Johnston, author of Descent and Irish Girl

"Watch Me Go is a nuanced, suspenseful work of a prodigious and stunning imagination. Mark Wisniewski has created a literary novel of suspense that displays on every page the author's bracing intelligence and humanity." —Christine Sneed, author of Little Known Facts and Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry

"Watch Me Go’s timeless weaving of narratives about love, luck, and loss is wonderfully suspenseful and insightful. Wisniewski has crafted a soulful thriller that kept me guessing until the final page." —Alethea Black, author of I Knew You’d Be Lovely

Extrait

"To answer your question,” Bark says to me, “I’m going to my

place so we can stop being scared.”

“And you really think a gun’ll help us with that?” James says.

“I do,” Bark says. “And yes, Jimmy, that is just my opinion. But

we are talking about a ride in my truck, so anytime you’d rather

walk, I’ll be glad to pull over.”

“No need,” James says as he reaches past me to try to open the

passenger-side door—and I shove him back down, ticked off all the

more since here I am again, playing peacekeeper.

Then Bark, too, gets all fatherly:

“Okay, James. My gun will be in that glove box in front of you,

so you decide. Mississippi, or your apartment. Choose your apartment

and I will take you there. Not all the way to your building,

mind you, since your building will probably have officers in front of

“its entrance, but I will drop you within, say, four blocks of those

officers. It’s just that you need to let me know what you want now,

so I can plan the best route through this traffic.”

Then we all three sit as still as we had when we’d been screamed

at by our hoops coach. It’s like we’ve scrapped and lucked our way

this far, but now we’re all benched, losing our biggest game. Then

it hits me that what Bark told James goes for me, too—head

for Mississippi with an unregistered gun, or go home to wait for cops

to knock.

“Then I’m out,” James says. “But don’t take me to my place,

Bark.”

“Then where?” Bark says.

“My grandma’s.”

Traffic lets us move maybe three or four feet.

“In Queens,” James adds.

I roll down my window and look ahead and behind: cars as far

as I can see.

“Fine,” Bark says.

“You take me there?” James asks.

“I said I’d drop you.”

And again, we all simply sit. This, I realize, might be our last

conversation ever, and as scared as I am about the drum and the

gun, my throat catches because of plain old sentiment.

Bark clears his throat. “Obviously the story we all stick with is

that, today, none of us went upstate.”

“Agree with you there,” James says.

“Today was all about the horses,” Bark says, “for all three of us.”

“Right,” I say, and now here’s Bark, asking where James’s grandma

lives, up near Ditmars or down toward Queensboro Plaza, and here’s

James, telling Bark she’s just off Steinway on about Thirty-

fourth Ave, and now here they go, talking restaurants and clubs in Astoria

like Bark’s a cabbie James just met. There’s no mention of the trifecta

cash, not once. But I know James has it in mind because I

have it in mind.

Bark picks at an ingrown hair on his neck. James closes his eyes.

I’m still deciding if I’ll travel with Bark. My gut says play the same

card James did—insist we go minus the gun—but I can’t read Bark

for whether, with one friend gone, he’ll value his last more or prefer

flying solo.

For a moment I want to say, James, you are bailing. Then we are

whizzing ahead, and I can’t remember having rolled out of traffic,

which confirms that, for a stretch there, I lost myself in thought.

Stress, I think. Or are you just aging? Or were you thinking about

Madalynn?

Then there we are, pulling over on a street full of houses just off

Steinway, and James’s posture straightens as he points at an upstairs

duplex with white trellises without vines. Bark brakes hard

and James and I get out, and there, on that sidewalk, I wonder how

it feels to know one of your grandmothers, and I figure Bark wonders

this, too.

But Bark’s counting the trifecta cash.

“Maybe you’ll need it more than I will?” James says, though he’s

lingering right there, near Bark’s open passenger door.

Bark hands James a folded share. He snaps off another few bills

and gives those.

“For Grandmama,” he says.

James nods, pockets his share, heads for the porch. Halfway up

the stairs, he stops and turns and nods at Bark, then at me.

“Cool,” he says.

“Right,” I say, but he’s already turned to ring his grandma’s

doorbell, so I get back in the truck, closing the door as we accelerate

off.

Bark shakes his head and says, “Pussy.”

He means James, though what I also hear is that Bark is not at

all up for another request to travel unarmed.

Then he says, “You just know he’ll tell Granny about that

drum.”

“Count on it,” I say.

“The way I figure things? She takes those extra twenties and he

tells her they’re from me? Best investment I ever made.”

And again there is more than words to Bark’s words. There’s

the point that he still holds my share of our money, that money still

talks, that I’d be smart to stay on the good side of power. And already

I miss James, because James’s verbal flow always gave logic a

chance to be said out loud and considered. With Bark and Bark

only, everything’s glances and cash and manhood. There’ll be

fewer quibbles without James, but there’ll be fewer laughs.

Still, as Bark and I and his truck roll out of Queens, instinct

from somewhere, maybe the father I never saw, tells me that to

abandon Bark now would be a loser’s move. After all, Bark’s been

my man since high school. He’s found me work when I’ve needed

cash. His time spent with Madalynn, platonic or not, proves we’re

cut from the same cloth.

On the Triboro, all lanes become jammed. Silence up here

grows thorns. There’s no arguing about the truth that the Belmont

win, by assuring we’d travel in this rush hour, cost us time.

Bark clicks on the radio. A truck jackknifed, the broadcaster

says, and someone in it died. No one will budge until everything’s

chalked and photographed. I tell myself this means fewer cops

looking for us. But then comes top-of-the-hour news about a

murder in Putnam County.

“No way,” I say out loud.

Bark’s considered answer is, “You think?”

I don’t dare say a word, sure my voice would crack. If James

were here now, we’d be lectured. But now there’s no doubt about

one thing. Bark is headed for his gun.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: THORNDIKE PR
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1410479625
• ISBN 13: 9781410479624
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 431
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible