The Long Take
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018
A noir narrative written with the intensity and power of poetry, The Long Take is one of the most remarkable - and unclassifiable - books of recent years.
Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can't return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he moves from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but - as those dark, classic movies made clear - the country needed outsiders to study and dramatise its new anxieties.
While Walker tries to piece his life together, America is beginning to come apart: deeply paranoid, doubting its own certainties, riven by social and racial division, spiralling corruption and the collapse of the inner cities. The Long Take is about a good man, brutalised by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it - yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.
Watching beauty and disintegration through the lens of the film camera and the eye of the poet, Robin Robertson's The Long Take is a work of thrilling originality.
WINNER OF THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2019
WINNER OF THE ROEHAMPTON POETRY PRIZE 2018
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2018
PRAISE FOR THE LONG TAKE
'A propulsive verbal tour de force . . . A hymn to destruction that exposes our country's betrayal of the American Dream in the years following World War II... When was the last time you said of a book of poetry, "I couldn't put it down?" Well, now's your chance.' The Washington Post
'Superlative.' Justine Jordan, The Guardian 'Books of the Year'
'The wondrous story of a Canadian veteran of the second world war who washes up in New York and then Los Angeles - told mostly in verse... Probably the best novel of the year.' The Economist 'Books of the Year'
'Hypnotic and wrenching... Robertson transforms the long take into an epic taking of life, liberty, reason, and hope in this saga of a good man broken by war and a city savaged by greed, an arresting and gorgeously lyrical and disquieting tale of brutal authenticity, hard-won compassion, and stygian splendor.' Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Long Take took us on an unforgettable journey through post-war America. With a hard-boiled flavour and absorbing narrative reminiscent of great noir fiction, Robin Robertson’s poem follows World War II veteran Walker as he wanders the country, trying to forget the horrors of combat and re-settle into society. Along the way, Walker encounters many troubled souls, giving Robertson the opportunity to mine deep into the human condition and ask challenging questions about guilt and redemption. Whether he’s describing one man’s desperation or swathes of the American landscape, Robertson’s prose is vivid, inventive and utterly gripping.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this insistent novel in verse from Robertson (Sailing the Forest) captures a D-Day veteran's tortured reckoning with the postwar hollowing out of downtown Los Angeles. Back from Europe, Walker is mesmerized by L.A., "the city/ a magnesium strip; a carnival/ on one long midway." That romantic view is tempered by the city's underbelly of violence, racism, and poverty, which he encounters as a cub reporter. Dismayed by Skid Row, he pitches a feature on homelessness that sends him up to San Francisco and its "play of height and depth, this/ changing sift of color and weather." Walker returns to find downtown L.A. being "demolished and rebuilt" into highway interchanges and parking lots. "The drumfire of falling/ buildings" calls back Walker's war memories, and Robertson skillfully intermingles imagery of battles in France and L.A.'s demolished blocks to powerfully contend that "cities are a kind of war." Less convincing is when Robertson exchanges his magnificent depictions for pedantry, including the declaration that "they call this progress, when it's really only greed." Still, this novel succeeds in bringing life to a crucial moment of urban history; Robertson's vision of Los Angeles under siege is simply indispensable.
