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WORK TITLE: A Rising Tide of People Swept Away
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/13/1951
WEBSITE: http://www.scottarcherjones.com/
CITY:
STATE: NM
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 13, 1951.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Shuter Library of Angel Fire, treasurer; grant writer. Was involved in several other industries, including wine, utilities, lumber, and groceries.
AWARDS:Florida Authors & Publishers Association President Award.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Prior to starting his writing career, Scott Archer Jones was involved in several other industries, including wine, utilities, lumber, and groceries. He has also traveled extensively, with some of his stops including the likes of Norway and the Netherlands. Jones has contributed writing to numerous publications, as well as released his own novels. His work has earned him numerous accolades, such as three Fine Art Photography Awards and a finalist spot for the Faulkner-Wisdom Book Awards.
Jupiter and Gilgamesh
Jupiter and Gilgamesh: A Novel of Sumeria and Texas is Jones’s introductory novel. The novel centers on protagonist Matthew Devon, also called “Matt.” Matt starts off the novel in seclusion, having abandoned his thriving career in advertising to making his residence in a town just outside of his old city. He has also given himself a new name: “Jupiter.” Matt feels compelled to spend his time penning a book about Gilgamesh; however, fat has other plans in store for him that closely mirror Gilgamesh’s own legendary exploits.
Jim Booth, writing on the The New Southern Gentleman website, said: “Jones has a number of narrative threads running through Jupiter and Gilgamesh and these don’t always weave together as smoothly as one imagines they could.” He added: “But in the end, both Jones and Jupiter/Matt get it all sorted out – and so do we readers.”
The Big Wheel
The Big Wheel centers partly on Robko Zlata, a criminal who has managed to make off with a set of devices, one of which serves as a resting place for a man named O’Brien. Once a powerful political figure and businessman, O’Brien had his knowledge and memories uploaded to the device for preservation. On Zlata’s trail, however, is another character by the name of Thomas Steward, who deduces that the best way to track Zlata down is to learn the ins and outs of his thought process. From there, Steward takes on Zlata’s mannerisms and lifestyle, yet doing so draws Steward into just as peril as it grants him success.
On the Scholars & Rogues website, Jim Booth wrote: “For the insightful reader, further parallels between characters from Dostoyevsky, Gibson, and perhaps even Stevenson will reveal themselves, making The Big Wheel a richer, more rewarding reading experience than the typical techno-thriller or cyberpunk dystopian novel.”
A Rising Tide of People Swept Away
A Rising Tide of People Swept Away focuses on the efforts of the residents of Bosque to care for a young boy who stumbles across their neighborhood. The boy, GMR Whittington (short for Gerald Matthew Roger), has just managed to escape from a chaotic household and refuses to go back. Yet, just as GMR is in trouble, so is the neighborhood. A building project is being developed that could destroy Bosque completely and force its residents to move elsewhere. The residents’ efforts to preserve their homes as well as keep GMR safe quickly intertwine.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked: “There’s violence, a little hope, and charity to be found in this truly excellent book.” New Southern Gentleman reviewer Jim Booth said: “What Jones does a wonderful job of making clear is that while it is possible to save the future, the present (and past) may have to pay heavy prices for that salvation.” He added: “We need more books that understand the struggle between past, present, and future this well.” Joe Kilgore, a writer on The U.S. Review of Books website, commented: “If you’re looking for a book that shuns easy genre categorization, one that offers insight as well as irony, the kind of novel that accurately represents a level of society you may be lucky enough not to know, and a tome unsparing in its reflection of life as it often is—rather than simply the way we’d have it be—then read this book.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of A Rising Tide of People Swept Away.
ONLINE
New Southern Gentleman, https://newsoutherngentleman.wordpress.com/ (July 26, 2014), Jim Booth, review of Jupiter and Gilgamesh; (May 12, 2016), Jim Booth, review of A Rising Tide of People Swept Away.
Onyx Neon Shorts, http://shorts.onyxneon.com/ (July 9, 2018), author profile.
Scholars & Rogues, https://scholarsandrogues.com/ (April 30, 2015), Jim Booth, review of The Big Wheel.
Scott Archer Jones website, http://www.scottarcherjones.com (July 9, 2018), author profile.
Smashwords, https://www.smashwords.com/ (July 9, 2018), author profile.
U.S. Review of Books, http://www.theusreview.com (June 6, 2018), Joe Kilgore, review of A Rising Tide of People Swept Away.
UPDATE -- Scott's book Jupiter was a finalist in two Eric Hoffer Award Categories, 2017. US Review of Books review posted this for the Legacy Fiction Category: http://www.theusreview.com/USRhoffer.html#lfic
First Runner-Up
Jupiter and Gilgamesh: A Novel of Sumeria and Texas, Scott Archer Jones, Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) Publishing - The root idea of this book, that a Texas businessman-cum-hermit and a 5,000 year old Sumerian king could be in mutually beneficial conversation with each other, might be absurd to some, but as in any fanciful tale, it all comes down to the author's skill in enabling the reader to suspend disbelief and enter into the strange journey being projected. Archer is skilled to an exceptional degree. His writing is terse; he respects the reader's ability to read between the lines and form the picturesque: "As he sat there, the sky turned black and rolled past the tower, carrying winter back into the plains." There is an implied spirituality to the story that turns the bleakness of a deterministic world into one of unexpected possibility. Matt Devon's life seemed locked down upon a tragedy until he 'met' Gilgamesh, and it spun upon its axis to one of unforseen possibility. Beyond the simple pleasure of a tale told well, the playfulness and joy beneath the surface of this unlikely yarn is the author's gift to the reader.
Scott Archer Jones is currently living and working on his sixth novel in northern New Mexico, after stints in the Netherlands, Scotland and Norway plus less exotic locations. He's worked for a power company, grocers, a lumberyard, an energy company (for a very long time), and a winery. He was on the masthead of the Prague Revue, and his novel Jupiter and Gilgamesh, a Novel of Sumeria and Texas (2014) and his novel The Big Wheel (2015) have been released by Southern Yellow Pines Publishing. Fomite Press released a rising tide of people swept away in 2016.
He's been a finalist in the New Mexico Arizona Book Awards, the Faulkner-Wisdom Book Awards, and has won Gold and Silver FAPA President Awards for 3 books. He's published here and there (39 magazines and counting) but received enough rejection to achieve humility.
Scott cuts all his own firewood, lives a mile from his nearest neighbor and writes grant applications for the community. He was the Treasurer of Shuter Library of Angel Fire, a private 501.C3. The Library desperately needs your money to keep the doors open.
https://www.facebook.com/ScottArcherJones
www.scottarcherjones.com
www.shuterlibrary.net
Scott Archer Jones is currently living and working on his sixth novel in northern New Mexico, after stints in the Netherlands, Scotland and Norway plus less exotic locations. He’s worked for a power company, grocers, a lumberyard, an energy company (for a very long time), and a winery. He has launched three books. Jupiter and Gilgamesh, a Novel of Sumeria and Texas in 2014, The Big Wheel in 2015, and this one, a rising tide of people swept away.
Scott Archer Jones is currently living and working on his sixth novel in northern New Mexico, after stints in the Netherlands, Scotland and Norway plus less exotic locations. He’s worked for a power company, grocers, a lumberyard, an energy company (for a very long time), and a winery. Now he’s on the masthead of the Prague Revue, and launched a novel last year with Southern Yellow Pine, Jupiter and Gilgamesh, a Novel of Sumeria and Texas. The next book is The Big Wheel, in March.
He’s been a finalist a few writing contests but not yet a winner. He’s published here and there but received enough rejection to achieve humility.
Scott cuts all his own firewood, lives a mile from his nearest neighbor and writes grant applications for the community. He is the Treasurer of Shuter Library of Angel Fire, a private 501.C3, and desperately needs your money to keep the doors open.
Find him online at
http://www.facebook.com/ScottArcherJones
www.scottarcherjones.com
No bio
Jones, Scott Archer: A RISING TIDE OF PEOPLE SWEPT AWAY
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Jones, Scott Archer A RISING TIDE OF PEOPLE SWEPT AWAY Fomite (Indie Fiction) $15.00 3, 1 ISBN: 978-1-942515-43-2
To save their little community, a band of down-and-outers fights city hall in this tale set in a slightly fictionalized version of present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In this novel's first part, readers meet the characters who inhabit the Bosque community, such as Gerald Matthew Roger "GMR" Whittington, a boy who's on the run from his mess of a family. Others include Tenn Dortmund, the sage bartender at local watering hole Rip's; Richard Martin, an alcoholic, poetry-spouting pawnbroker; Helen Parch, a troubled librarian; the Rev.Halvard; kindly bar denizenRed Donnie; and many others. Largely a good-hearted bunch, they all care about GMR and want to keep him safe from his abusive family.They don't just shelter him, but also try to teach and nurture him--they are that village that it proverbially takes to raise a child. But they've not only charged themselves with protecting GMR, but also with saving their own homes and livelihoods. Yet another bridge across the Rio Grande is planned--a bridge that will rip right through the neighborhood. What follows is neighborhood mobilization, bureaucratic tussle and hustle, and anguished questions meeting boilerplate responses. To the author's great credit, there are no Frank Capra-esque or "Kumbaya" moments here, and midway through the novel, the plot really takes off. Novelist Jones (The Big Wheel, 2015,etc.) knows his bailiwick and its denizens well, and he shows himself to be a skilled and experienced writer. The scenes involving the local bureaucracy are both comic and infuriating; city councilman Benjamin Taylor is a typically smooth bully who has all the urban development arguments down pat. Readers can contrast him with quiet Dortmund, a man whose life might seem wasted, due to alcohol and prison, but who's learned valuable lessons along the way.
There's violence, a little hope, and charity to be found in this truly excellent book.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Jones, Scott Archer: A RISING TIDE OF PEOPLE SWEPT AWAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650592/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c68c9af7. Accessed 6 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650592
Book Review: The Big Wheel by Scott Archer Jones
By Jim Booth on April 30, 2015 • ( 2 Comments )
Scott Archer Jones’s The Big Wheel is part cyberpunk dystopian thriller, part corporate espionage thriller. It’s also an interesting study of the search for identity.
The Big Wheel by Scott Archer Jones (image courtesy Goodreads)
Last year I reviewed Scott Archer Jones’s first novel Jupiter and Gilgamesh. A key theme I noted that made that novel of particular interest was its main character’s quest for his identity and the struggles he goes through to complete his quest.
Interestingly, that same theme pervades his second novel, The Big Wheel. That in itself might not be that noteworthy except that while Jupiter and Gilgamesh was clearly a work of literary fiction, The Big Wheel is a genre work, a techno-thriller with cyberpunk elements. But as with his previous novel, Jones explores issues of identity and understanding of the self, albeit in this latter case via a convoluted, almost Freudian version of the Jekyll and Hyde story. What makes The Big Wheel notable is not its well structured caper/chase narrative; what makes this novel notable is that theme of quest for identity.
The plot of The Big Wheel concerns the theft of a storage device (actually several storage devices). What differentiates one of these devices, however, from the others is that instead of the corporate secrets of a business mogul/politician named O’Brien, one device, a specially constructed cube, has allowed O’Brien to download and save his consciousness, perhaps his soul. The thief, one Robko Zlata, will remind one of a couple of characters, one Henry Case of Neuromancer, the other Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment. Zlata’s fascination with his craft and his belief that he can triumph over impossible odds aligns him with Raskolnikov; his damaged personality and his drug addictions will remind one of Case. Zlata’s theft of the “artifact,” as it’s called, unleashes a vast response from various of O’Brien’s tentacles: his standard security apparatus, his illegal private army, and his corporate raider division.
From that last group comes the novel’s other major protagonist, Thomas Steward. Steward is a character whose dedication to his career has left him in search of his own identity, much like the character Matt Devon in Jupiter and Gilgamesh. Steward is motivated in his pursuit of Zlata by different aims than the dutiful Garland, head of corporate security, or the murderous LeFarge, head of O’Brien’s private army. Steward realizes, as he begins to gather information about Zlata, that in order to catch up to the thief he has to learn how Zlata thinks, how he lives. In the pursuit of that information, Steward tries living like Zlata, even developing similar drug habits and affectations of dress and behavior. This behavior allows Steward to find Zlata, but it also brings him into conflict with the sociopathic LeFarge and the equally brutal O’Brien. The consequences are, as to be expected, in some cases bloody and horrific, in other cases left handedly merciful, but they eventually lead to a sort of rough justice for all the novel’s important characters.
For the insightful reader, further parallels between characters from Dostoyevsky, Gibson, and perhaps even Stevenson will reveal themselves, making The Big Wheel a richer, more rewarding reading experience than the typical techno-thriller or cyberpunk dystopian novel. Thomas Steward’s search for himself even as he searches for Robko Zlata reveals an essential truth that any great search narrative reveals: even as we search of the one we think our opposite, we find ourselves. As Baudelaire tells us, “Tu le connais…ce monstre délicat/…mon semblable, mon frère!” Scott Archer Jones reminds us that whether 19th century Russia or 21st century America, to know ourselves we often must come to know others.
Book Review: A Rising Tide of People Swept Away by Scott Archer Jones
Posted on May 12, 2016 by Jim Booth
How will we respond to the children? – Scott Archer Jones
A Rising Tide of People Swept Away (image courtesy Smashwords)
We live in a world of diversity, of change, of uncertainty. The new novel by Scott Archer Jones, A Rising Tide of People Swept Away, explores what Dr. Johnson might call the “interstial vacuities.” A small boy from a troubled family, a family part Hispanic, part Anglo, becomes the “adopted” child of a group of troubled people in the Albuquerque Bosque area. The story of how he is saved while they are lost is the focus of A Rising Tide of People Swept Away.
I think this is a significant book for a couple of reasons. First, it is a novel that addresses what is happening to too many in our country: people who are pawns in the machinations of government working in concert with wealthy forces interested in increasing their wealth do their best to fight back against adds that are so stacked against them they are doomed from the start. Second, and this is the real story and power of Jones’s novel, this is a story of how human love and kindness persist in the face of the forces mentioned in the first reason.
The small boy mentioned above, GMR Whittington, spends the novel trying to escape a dysfunctional home. His father is an alcoholic car thief – his mother a cocaine addicted prostitute – his older brother a budding gang leader/killer. His unlikely – and endearing – saviors include Tenn, a seedy bar’s manager, his bulimic bar maid Regina, an alcoholic pawn shop owner, Richard, a slightly frayed PR man, Harry, and a librarian with frustrated motherhood neuroses,, Helen. Together, despite all odds, they manage to rescue GMR and give him a chance at a decent life.
This same group are also core members in the local association who tries to stop the “powers that be” in Albuquerque from building a new highway bridge whose on ramp will destroy their neighborhood. To be clear: it is a neighborhood of what are too easily called life’s losers. Besides the bar and pawn shop mentioned above, the poor neighborhood includes a taxidermy business, an evangelical church catering to it poor congregation, and a hair dresser’s shop. The characters who run these businesses play parts in the story, too, and the parallel plots of saving the life of one child and saving a neighborhood mirror each other in a significant way: what Jones does a wonderful job of making clear is that while it is possible to save the future, the present (and past) may have to pay heavy prices for that salvation.
We need more books that understand the struggle between past, present, and future this well.
Book Review: Jupiter and Gilgamesh: a Novel of Sumeria and Texas by Scott Archer Jones
Posted on July 26, 2014 by Jim Booth
Jupiter and Gilgamesh is a story about life decisions – good, bad, and inexplicable – and how those decisions add up ultimately to – a life well lived…
Jupiter and Gilgamesh: a Novel of Sumeria and Texas by Scott Archer Jones (image courtesy Goodreads)
I have an empathetic affinity for the genesis of Scott Archer Jones’s latest novel, Jupiter and Gilgamesh: a Novel of Sumeria and Texas. Jones states that the genesis of his book came partly from a high school English teacher who made him read The Epic of Gilgamesh – and that the character of Gilgamesh was so intriguing (probably compelling is a better word) that he’s read the poem multiple times since that first encounter.
In the vernacular of our time, I feel you, Scott. My first book came partly from my experience of a couple of related works first read at the behest of teachers: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The power of literature draws us on, it seems, like the song of the sirens until some of us begin to “sing in our chains,” as the poet said.
That singing in one’s chains thing is a key theme in Jupiter and Gilgamesh. The main character is one Matthew (Matt) Devon, a gifted advertising man who owns a very successful ad agency in Amarillo, Texas. When we meet Matt, however, (I’ll ignore the novel’s prelude for now) he is living – hiding out, really – in an old grain elevator that he is having remodeled in a small farming town a short distance from Amarillo), trying to run his business via phone conferences, and has taken to calling himself Jupiter. His rationale for the first two acts is that he’s developed a trying case of anthropophobia (perhaps more well known as social anxiety disorder). His rationale for the last is partly that he’s using the alias as a nom de guerre with his “counselor,” a New Age “life coach” named Marjorie who offers Matt tea and sympathy both literally and figuratively. He’s a man in retreat from business, from people, from life.
And then Gilgamesh shows up. He teaches Jupiter/Matt a new tune.
Jones’s introduction of Gilgamesh is slightly fumbling, although within the scope of the novel it makes perfect sense. One of the projects Matt Devon, alias Jupiter, has set for himself is to write a book about Gilgamesh. As he’s sitting in front of his laptop trying to get started on the book (which, like much Jupiter/Matt is doing early in the novel, is a way of occupying his mind so that he doesn’t have to deal with his problems), his frustration leads him to begin writing (talking?) directly to the ancient hero king:
You were not born a king’s son. You were not even born in Uruk. You were not a pretty child at all. If it is true your mother was a goddess, then she did not start you off with her heavenly looks. They named you Gilgamesh, although we had that wrong for some time…. It was a very long time ago, twenty seven hundred years or so before Christ….
Jupiter/Matt goes on in this vein for awhile, then pauses to get himself a drink. Returning to his computer, he finds his first message from Gilgamesh: “What is my mother like?”
And from this point the novel begins to take off. Matt Devon, aka Jupiter, despite his desire to lead the hermetic life in “the wilderness” away from the complexities of Amarillo and his life there, is drawn out and into a series of adventures (one might think here of the hero’s journey and not be far off) that both define his similarity to – and difference from – the great warrior king – and epic hero -Gilgamesh.
Despite his social anxiety Jupiter/Matt acquires friends: first, his contractor, then, through Bobbie, the runaway he befriends, his contractor’s wife and the runaway’s aunt; a lover, his contractor’s daughter, a “nubile blonde” less than half his age; and enemies, such as the mayor and town council of Aniline, that small farm town outside Amarillo where Jupiter/Matt’s conversion of the old grain elevator into a home has aroused the indignation – and ignited a zoning war – with that power elite and his disloyal second-in-command at his agency, Jerry, who both betrays him and steals from him. His interactions with these people, forced on him by some, entered into voluntarily (if at times Prozac managed) with others, forms the bulk of the novel’s action.
But it is in his relationship with two central characters, both young, both women, that Jupiter/Matt is most like his counterpart from Sumeria. Kate, daughter of his contractor, with whom he develops a romantic relationship, tests – and punishes, after a fashion – him much as Ishtar tests and punishes Gilgamesh. The young runaway Roberta, known as Bobbie, that Jupiter/Matt rescues only to lose to forces beyond his control serves multiple functions. She is the child Jupiter/Matt never had and the neighbor’s child he accidentally killed (the event that haunts Matt and drives him to become Jupiter). She is also his Enkidu. Like the character in the Gilgamesh epic, she is a “wild creature” whom Jupiter “tames,” not with sex as in the Sumerian epic but with food, shelter, and kindness. Like Enkidu, however, she is chosen as a sacrifice to the gods: the abused daughter of a meth addict mother, she dies of multiple forms of hepatitis which her mother’s poor parenting have allowed her to contract.
Tested by his experiences with Kate and Bobbie, as well as by his struggles with both the Aniline town council and his disloyal employee Jerry, Jupiter/Matt is chastened – but ultimately unbowed. He takes responsibility for his business (rebuilding it into an even stronger firm); he accepts that his relationship with Kate may/may not work out (and helps her pursue her career goals); he, with the aid of both his ad agency and – in a clear nod to deus ex machina – the National Trust for Historic Preservation – saves Aniline from the clutches of a wealthy farmer who is clearly a Tea Party type intent on making sure that the town dies in the name of “saving money”: he helps the mayor, his sworn enemy, but a man with a vision for growth for the community, get re-elected. And he gets the grain elevator – his tower retreat – declared a National Historic Site, a move that will both is a win for him and a win for the town since it will encourage tourism and development. Freed from his tower, Jupiter is free – and Matt Devon can return home, his hero’s journey complete. As the novel notes in its last line, “It was the most perfect thing.”
If all this sounds a little messy, it is at times. Jones has a number of narrative threads running through Jupiter and Gilgamesh and these don’t always weave together as smoothly as one imagines they could. But in the end, both Jones and Jupiter/Matt get it all sorted out – and so do we readers. A key to fully appreciating the novel, I think, is to remember that a Sumerian epic hero and warrior king and a 21st century traumatized neurotic advertising executive are not all that different, really. Both want to do good, even great things. And both want to be remembered for lives well lived.
Thanks to Jupiter and Gilgamesh: A Novel of Sumeria and Texas, they will be.
A Rising Tide of People Swept Away
by Scott Archer Jones
Fomite
book review by Joe Kilgore
"The room was hot, just the way she liked it, hot enough that she sweated in penance. In the kitchen the preacher echoed forth from the radio, his phrasing taut, compelling, and rhythmic as a hymn."
A book cover with all the words of the title written in lower case—a hint, perhaps, that some lives are afforded less respect than others. Then a dedication to the working poor—further evidence that what you are about to read has nothing to do with the public’s seeming obsession with wealth, celebrity, and the glitterati. Lastly, the novel itself—far from a screed or polemic, more an homage to humanity with the realization that the effort is the truly important part, regardless of the outcome.
There is something in the hardscrabble existence of the denizens populating this author's Albuquerque strip center circa 2009 that puts one in mind of John Steinbeck’s far earlier neighborhood inhabitants of Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. Maybe it’s the way that humor often serves as a salve for the many afflictions befalling them. Or maybe it’s the recognition that family can emerge as much from communal commitment as it does from bonds of blood.
The plot of Jones’s novel initially centers on a small boy who so abhors living with his parents and siblings that he prefers existing in the alleys, nooks, and crannies of a decaying collection of retail outlets. The youngster’s decision is understandable as readers become acquainted with his father’s criminal endeavors, his mother’s reliance on booze and dope, his sisters’ frailties, and his older brother’s violent tendencies. Owners, operators, and workers who eke out a meager existence at the mall’s bar, restaurant, hair salon, religious novelty shop, and other stores take pity on the boy and go out of their way to make sure he not only gets enough to eat but also has a safe place to stay atop one of the establishments. Soon, however, both the boy’s and his benefactors’ subsistence is put in peril. The city plans highway construction that will literally eviscerate the strip center. While the city is claiming its right of eminent domain, the citizens face upheaval they can’t afford economically and can’t handle emotionally. Will their community band together to fight City Hall? Can the march of progress be allowed to uproot individuals whose lives are so permanently invested in where they live and work? And will the at-risk child be forced to return to his poisonous relatives? Answers play out to all of these questions before the novel’s end.
Jones’s players, like his narrative, are steeped in realism. He creates flesh-and-blood characters that rise above fictional caricatures. Their dialogue bounces back and forth with the volley of real conversation. Their behavior credibly responds to the situations in which they find themselves. Their emotions resonate with truth. The author’s style is lyrical when it wants to be, logical when it needs to be, and continually engrossing, whether depicting acts of kindness or scenes of brutality. Above all, his writing reverberates with compassion. You sense that he both understands and empathizes with the types of people he’s chosen to fictionally portray. If you’re looking for a book that shuns easy genre categorization, one that offers insight as well as irony, the kind of novel that accurately represents a level of society you may be lucky enough not to know, and a tome unsparing in its reflection of life as it often is—rather than simply the way we’d have it be—then read this book. You’ll remember it long after the last page has been turned.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review