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You Were Never Really Here by Jonathan Ames (view source)
Revision as of 15:00, 31 August 2020
, 15:00, 31 August 2020no edit summary
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Crime
|summary=Pitch black novellas don't often come this gritty, but for me , the lack of resolution was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
|rating=3.5
|buy=Maybe
For me, I was right on board; the reader is thrown pell-mell into a dark alley with unknown assailants, and it goes on from there – little reprieve, little dialogue, one of those longest night novels where you can't pretend to be sure of seeing the sunrise. But there was still a scene that gave me a hiccup, that of the end. It felt a little as if the author was declaiming his nous at being the provider of a terse, no-holds-barred thriller, and making sure he delivered until he hit the word count, without being able to go either forward with the story or back to revise. Before then I had not been completely fond of the narrative style – the narration is too bullish in defining Joe, saying 'he did this' and 'he had done that as he needed the other' in such a dry reportage style you feel Joe is a little too robotic, metronomic, and too much in a doubt-free world. The narrator knows the character of someone Joe encounters on his nocturnal travails, which I'm sure Joe was experienced enough to discern, but when he also knows his name and previous career – I felt too removed from reality.
But that terse, no-holds-barred intention runs throughout these pages, however, like poisoned letters in some toxic rock. As far as it gets in providing a full story, it does provide a full character, a full milieu and a full dose of black grittiness. The world of the book is a sober and sobering one, and if you disagree with me and feel a better engagement with it, this will be to you the most deceptive lightweight boxer – punching with the heft of someone of much larger calibercalibre.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
My previous Pushkin Vertigo was the excellent [[Bird in a Cage by Frederic Dard and David Bellos (translator)]] – completely absorbing, and only a smidge longer than this from Ames. You might also enjoy [[The Wrong Man by Jason Dean]].
{{amazontext|amazon=1782272453}}