Lisa Moore's Alligator gives dramatic birth to a new kind of fiction: North Atlantic Gothic. The story moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in contemporary St. John's, Newfoundland — a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O'Connor country. Its denizens jostle each other in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, lust, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Meet Madeleine, the driven aging filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies; Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers; Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters; and Colleen, at seventeen a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. In these pages humanity is a bizarre combination of the reptilian and the saintly. Listen to its heartbeat, and be moved — and delighted.
Alligator
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
From Amazon
On the opening page of this mesmerizing first novel by the author of Open, a man puts his head into the mouth of an alligator, with grisly results. Part of an industrial training video, the incident is shocking yet strangely static, stripped bare of emotion. The girl watching the video has seen it many times before and her listless fascination with its random inevitability sets the tone for an unsettling exploration of the reptilian side of human nature. Like the man in the video, Lisa Moore's characters knowingly, and even willfully, place themselves in danger. Seventeen-year-old Colleen reels recklessly from vigilante-style eco-terrorism to drunken one-night stands with strangers in downtown St. John's. Her aunt Madeleine (maker of the alligator video) ignores the signs of serious illness in order to finish one last film. Madeleine's leading actor, Isobel, perversely gives herself up to the influence of Valentin, a rapacious Russian drug dealer whose cold-blooded lust for cash ignites a violent series of events. Only Frank, the young hot-dog vendor who lives in the bed-sit below the Russian, shies away from danger, though he is dragged into it nonetheless: "He waited in case something else was coming. He waited for something else. He waited for things not to be the way they were. But everything was the way it was."
Cutting rapidly from one point of view to another, roaming freely between past and present in a single scene, and lingering sensuously over miniscule physical details (like the jar of faded forget-me-nots on Frank's windowsill), Lisa Moore is a stylist in a class with Virginia Woolf and Jeannette Winterson. While her dialogue can seem unnaturally confessional and the number of characters makes it difficult to identify with anyone for long, Alligator is a triumph. No one else in mainstream Canadian fiction writes quite like Lisa Moore. --Lisa Alward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The powerful American debut of Canadian bestseller Moore does for Newfoundland what Empire Falls did for dying smalltown Maine and The Sportswriter did for suburban New Jersey. Seventeen-year-old Colleen Clark and her mother, Beverly, can't overcome their grief over the sudden death of David, Beverly's husband and Colleen's stepfather. While Beverly copes by dieting and retreating into herself, Colleen downloads videos of beheadings off the Internet and tries her hand at eco-terrorism ("I wanted to change things," she says about dumping sugar into a bulldozer's gas tank) before running away to Louisiana"where alligators troll the bayou. Madeleine, Beverly's older sister, scrambles to finish her cinematic opus before her heart"heavy with longing for her youth and gradually weakening due to an unnamed medical condition"gives out. Frank, a 19-year-old still reeling from his mother's death from cancer, obsesses over Colleen and finds himself intertwined with Valentin, a Russian gangster with his own tormented past. Powerfully drawn secondary characters"an actress in Madeleine's film, Valentin's lover"add depth to this generous novel. (Sept. 21)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Lauren B. Davis
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Every aspiring writer should read this book to learn how to create fascinating, believable characters. Splendid, unique voice. Full of perception. Highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Wanting to support "local" authors I saw that this book was written by an author from St John's, Newfoundland and just had to get it for my friend who lives in Newfoundland. I wasn't convinced it would be a masterpiece but was surprised to find I really enjoyed it.
I have to admit, most books that win prestigious awards are beyond me and I can't seem to really get into them; this was the exception to the rule. Alligator's chapters are separated by a different character leaving you wondering how everyone connects and what happens with the person you just left behind. Lisa Moore did a wonderful job of having me relate to each character, namely Colleen and Frank who describe their own struggles and trepidations while working to achieve their own greatness, whatever that may be.
I'm glad I took the time to read through this book before passing it on and trust that whoever reads it next will enjoy it as much as I did or more.
Thanks for reading,
Sarah Butland
I have to admit, most books that win prestigious awards are beyond me and I can't seem to really get into them; this was the exception to the rule. Alligator's chapters are separated by a different character leaving you wondering how everyone connects and what happens with the person you just left behind. Lisa Moore did a wonderful job of having me relate to each character, namely Colleen and Frank who describe their own struggles and trepidations while working to achieve their own greatness, whatever that may be.
I'm glad I took the time to read through this book before passing it on and trust that whoever reads it next will enjoy it as much as I did or more.
Thanks for reading,
Sarah Butland
By J. Tobin Garrett
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
This book pulled me in with the first chapter. The style was refreshing and fun to read, however, I found that it didn't sustain throughout the whole book. Or, rather, the style sustained, but the freshness fell away and began to impede the story as I was really aware of the stylistic tricks in the language of the book. I'm speaking here of the very long sentences with many clauses linked by the word "and", as well as the sometimes esoteric shifts in time and the fragmented story lines. I don't need my books to be linear and clear-cut, but I felt that this book strayed too often in different directions and never spent enough time in any one significant spot to really develop the story fully.
I gave it three stars because there are some really great parts that I did enjoy. If I think of the book as merely fragments of character then I like it a bit more than if I imagine it as a cohesive book. I love books that cast wide nets with lots of characters and story lines, but I recognize that it's a hard thing to reign in and keep control of and I think it got away from Moore here a bit too often.
All in all, I found my mind wandering away from the book too many times while I was reading it, just unable to be captured by what was happening on the page. I think I would give Moore another shot though. Maybe try one of her short story books as it seems she would be good at writing short stories.
I gave it three stars because there are some really great parts that I did enjoy. If I think of the book as merely fragments of character then I like it a bit more than if I imagine it as a cohesive book. I love books that cast wide nets with lots of characters and story lines, but I recognize that it's a hard thing to reign in and keep control of and I think it got away from Moore here a bit too often.
All in all, I found my mind wandering away from the book too many times while I was reading it, just unable to be captured by what was happening on the page. I think I would give Moore another shot though. Maybe try one of her short story books as it seems she would be good at writing short stories.
Want to see more reviews on this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 6 reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
I could go either way with this one
I decided to read this book because it was nominated for the Giller Prize a few years back. After reading the book though, I was left with a bland feeling. Read more
Published on Oct 4 2006 by NorthVan Dave
5.0 out of 5 stars
Alligator Ate My Brain
Alligator is one of those rare books that really does live up to the hype, with a cast of characters that live and breathe and walk right off the page and right into your brain. Read more
Published on Aug 28 2006 by JoAnne Soper-Cook
4.0 out of 5 stars
First Chapter Zings
but then it gets into a ramble with alternating stories -- architectonic at its worst. The jumpy quality to her early stories, rambling snippets of experience -- she probably... Read more
Published on Feb 21 2006
1.0 out of 5 stars
A slow, monotonous read
This book was a Christmas gift. I began reading the book with an open-minded attitude, hoping for something great. Read more
Published on Jan 31 2006
4.0 out of 5 stars
I got married at the Kirk
I could visualize everything Moore wrote. Every character had fundamental choices which shaped their lives. Read more
Published on Jan 12 2006 by Jeannette
4.0 out of 5 stars
amazing
this is an amazing read...lisa moore molds characters into your mind, and makes you "feel" something...I couldn't put this book down. Read more
Published on Nov 7 2005
4.0 out of 5 stars
Different
One of the most original thrillers I have ever read. Awe-struck. Horrific...an absolute page-turner. Get ready to be amazed. Read more
Published on Oct 30 2005 by Ted
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
