Jernigan (Serpent's Tail Classics) - Softcover

Críticas

David Gates makes me sick with envy (Nick Hornby)

A sizzler of a novel, a whirlwind. It swept me up in the opening paragraphs ... I found myself wishing I could read fast enough to swallow it whole in a single sitting (Joseph Heller)

A bravura performance, sprawling and energetic, soused and noisy, with a bitter comic edge ... a rambunctious and enthralling portrait of a man who, by looking too closely, has finally lost sight of himself (Guardian)

A relentless, combustible mix of high literary art and low humour, wisecracking profanity and shellac dark glimpses into a man's wilful self-annihilation ... if there is one book that deserves to come in from the cold in the way Revolutionary Road, Alone in Berlin and Stoner have, it's David Gates's Jernigan. (Stuart Evers)

The minute he starts talking, Peter Jernigan, the narrator of David Gates' astonishing first novel, grabs you by the lapels and compels you to listen to the sad-funny-tragic story of his life ... one of recent literature's most memorable anti-heroes (Michiko Kakutani The New York Times)

What makes Gates' novel so good is not only its unblinking view of the horror and anomie of the American suburb, but also his hero's strangely seductive voice, which manages to be at once bitter and remorseful, funny and deluded (Financial Times)

The pleasures of David's Gates' superb novel lie in the voice he has created for Jernigan: boozy and belligerent, overdosed on irony, and characterised by its syntactical short circuits, abandoned clauses and half-finished thoughts ... a joy of a novel' (Observer)

Fearless in its exploration of expired American dreams and ruined prospects. A tale of fear and loathing in New Jersey, it strings beads of dark poetry and defiant laughter on the sinewy prose of survival (Jay McInerney)

One of the angriest and most sorrowful novels around (Ben Marcus New Yorker)

David Gates has created a memorable man for our times (Chicago Tribune)

Reseña del editor

Peter Jernigan's life is slipping out of control. His wife's gone, he's lost his job and he's a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn't work, you up the dose. And when that doesn't work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)

Jernigan's answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he's busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan's perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.

Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.