Escape!: A Novel - Hardcover

Fishbach, Stephen

 
9798217048151: Escape!: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 13: 9798217048151
Verlag: Dutton, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

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A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at redemption on a show set on a remote island, only to discover that the plot twists are beyond what they ever imagined.

Everyone gets the story arc they deserve.

Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory—to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but everyone is more than they appear.

The contestants’ goals seem simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.

As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by millions of fans), he’s worked on the network side as a Vice President at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts the Survivor Know-It-Alls podcast and hosts the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honors from Yale and received a master of fine arts in fiction at New York University. His short story “To Sharks”—an excerpt from Escape!—was published by One Story, which garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

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Chapter 1KentWhen the phone rings, Kent Duvall is in the Memorabilia Room watching himself on the reality show Endure. On days when he is feeling his age and the slab of gut hangs like an anchor at his waist, he will pop the disc into his DVD player, which clicks and snaps like an arthritic joint. He doesn't need much. The show's intro features a three-second slow-motion shot of him pounding his chest in the tropical light, hair billowing around his face. God, he had epic hair, long blond locks that in the island's unreasonable humidity looked like they belonged to the lead singer of an eighties metal band. Last year, his wife, Margaret, insisted he shave his head. "You're starting to look like you have a comb-over," she said, walking her conversational tightrope between loving joke and withering insult. He'll watch that three-second clip again and again, rewinding and replaying, rewinding and replaying, and think to himself, That is me.He still calls it the Memorabilia Room, though most of the memorabilia has been auctioned off on eBay. He argued that they were selling his treasures for much less than they were worth. Margaret said they were only "worth" what someone was willing to pay. What's left behind are the discolorations on the wallpaper to mark where he mounted the dull machete (fifty dollars), the necklace he carved out of driftwood and strung along a circlet of woven grass (seventy-five dollars), and the single set of clothes that he wore throughout the show's forty-five days, which reeked of sweat and woodsmoke even through the pane of protective glass (thirty dollars). The lone piece of memorabilia remaining is a photograph of him holding his one-hundred-thousand-dollar check and smiling into the universe.Kent pauses the DVD to answer the phone. A woman with the improbable name of Gita Seuss is on the line. She's organizing a charity event, she says in a voice like a cowbell, where former reality television contestants will sign autographs and mingle with paying fans. The signing will benefit . . . He misses who exactly it is supposed to benefit."I asked the fans who they wanted to see," Gita Seuss is saying, "and your name came up again and again. I said, Kent Duvall? He was on over a decade ago. But your fans love you, with a devotion that transcends time."Kent rolls his eyes. "I'll need some kind of appearance fee.""We can pay for your travel and lodging, which is what I've offered all our guests.""My appearance fee is fifteen hundred dollars.""This is for charity," she says."You have to understand, I get a lot of invitations-"Gita rattles off a list of other reality TV contestants who will attend. Most are names he doesn't recognize or wishes he didn't. A survivalist from Naked and Afraid, a finalist from The Bachelor, two Amazing Race winners, a longtime participant on MTV's The Challenge. Some are from television shows he's never heard of, shows he isn't even sure exist. Beauty and the Geek. Extreme Pregnancy. But Kent stands firm, and eventually Gita relents."The fans really want to see you," she says, the cowbell clanking mournfully.Fifteen hundred dollars off the top-what will it even matter to the diabetic orphans or homeless pets? Kent was once a mainstay on the reality charity event circuit, and he remains mystified by the economics of these affairs. A few hundred fans pay what-thirty dollars? fifty dollars?-for the privilege of getting drunk with contestants from their favorite shows. Out of that, the event organizer covers airfare and lodging for fifty-some reality stars. What could possibly be left for charity? He imagines Gita Seuss proudly handing an oversize novelty check for $23.57 to a group of confused kids from the children's hospital. But then, he thinks, the economics aren't the point. He and his fellow has-beens can recapture for a few fleeting hours the feeling of being famous; the fans get to fill the void in their lives that can only be filled by the autographs of former reality TV stars; and Gita Seuss can ascend to heaven for her efforts."It's for charity," Kent says to Margaret over dinner that night."You're not digging wells in Africa. You're getting drunk at a bar.""Why don't you come? It'll be fun. I bet I can get them to pay for-""No way, buster. I end up taking pictures while you play celebrity." Margaret has just come home from her shift at the hospital, and her face looks like a bruised orange."That's not true," Kent says."You hate these things. You come back miserable and talk about how annoying everybody is. They spend the entire time either explaining why they really deserved to win their show, or making alliances for a future season, so you drink too much and come home with a massive hangover. Then I have to spend the next day nursing you like a wounded bird.""It's fifteen hundred dollars," he says, holding out his hands. The truth is, even more than they need the money, he needs the money. He's tired of being a freeloader, tired of watching his wife drink day-old coffee. Kent Duvall's wife deserves five-dollar lattes! Most of all, Kent is tired of the way Margaret looks at him. Like she doesn't expect anything more. Like she's resigned herself to life with a lump.When he won the show, he quit his job to travel the country on the speaking circuit. His last paid speech was over four months ago. They gave him travel expenses and a five-hundred-dollar honorarium, and for that he rode a bus twelve hours to Shamrock Lakes, Indiana, on a frigid December afternoon. Seven bored kids swiped on their phones while he clicked through his PowerPoint and told them that if they believed in themselves, they could accomplish anything. Afterward, the tweedy professor who had organized the event drove him to the bus depot."It's very cold," the professor offered. "I can think of quite a few people who said they would come, but it's very cold."Kent nodded."And the students have finals next week.""Bad timing," Kent agreed."Well, I'm a huge fan," the tweedy professor said, bristling as if Kent were blaming him. "But I have to get back to campus. Do you mind if . . . ? The bus should be here any minute." And Kent waited for an hour in the bus depot, which was nothing more than a ticket kiosk and an out-of-order toilet that stank of piss, watching two meth heads bicker over which of them was at fault for ruining the other's life.Margaret used to come with him, back when he could still fill auditoriums. While he spoke, he would find her in the first row of the audience, and they would lock eyes and share a little smile that said, Isn't this all so silly? She'd drive him home, his right leg still jackrabbiting from the adrenaline, and she would mock the tweedy professors and the pompous administrators who were so honored to introduce-"Honored? Really? No offense, babe, but you're not the president"-and he loved it because he could see her pride. He would see it in the twist of her mouth when people stopped him on the street, or that time he was on the cover of a magazine. Sure, it was his college alumni publication, but still, a glossy object you could hold in your hand. She had the look of a skeptic waiting for the two-bit magician to reveal the wrong card, when suddenly he pulls a dove from the air. She liked dating a reality star. And it seemed in those days that the audiences for the speeches would grow. That a meeting with a producer could turn into a TV hosting gig.But for Margaret that dream died long ago, and in dying embarrassed her, like he had tricked her into exposing her most secret parts. And he was still giving these speeches."This could be an opportunity," he says to her now. "Billy Phillips will be there-""Billy Phillips the tech entrepreneur?""He was on this past season.""Why would Billy Phillips do reality television?" she asks, with the disdain she now harbors for the one significant thing in his life."I don't know. Because he can? I was thinking-I could hit him up for a job.""A job?" She looks...

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Verlag
Dutton
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 13 
9798217048151
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Dutton
https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/

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