Work Like Any Other
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Placing itself perfectly alongside acclaimed work by Philipp Meyer, Jane Smiley and J M Coetzee, this debut novel charts the story of Roscoe T Martin in rural Alabama in the 1920s. Roscoe has set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the 20th century: electricity. It becomes his training, his life's work. But when his wife Marie inherits her father's failing farm, Roscoe has to give it up, with great cost to his pride and sense of self, his marriage and his family. Realising that he might lose them all, he uses his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness on a farm recently falling to ruin. Even the love of Marie and their son seems back within Roscoe's grasp. Then everything changes. A young man is electrocuted on their land. Roscoe is arrested for manslaughter and - no longer an electrician or even a farmer - he must now carve out a place in a violent new world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Reeves's thoughtful, absorbing debut set in 1920s Alabama, Roscoe leaves his dream job as an electrician with Alabama Power to move with his wife, Marie, and son to the farm where Marie grew up. Roscoe, unhappy and unaccustomed to farm work, decides to tap the state's power lines and bring electricity into the farm. He and the hired hand, Wilson, work for a year bringing Roscoe's dream to fruition, and the farm enjoys increased prosperity with its newly electric thresher. But disaster strikes when a man from the power company is electrocuted; Roscoe and Wilson are arrested. Roscoe is sentenced to 20 years for larceny and manslaughter. During his time in prison, he works in the dairy, the library, and finally with the dogs to track escaped prisoners. Roscoe struggles to come to terms with his life and worries about what happened to Wilson and Marie (who hasn't made contact with him since the arrest). Alternating between the third-person and Roscoe's first-person point of view and shifting the narrative back and forth in time from Roscoe's childhood, through his life with Marie, to the daily work of the prison Reeves depicts the layers of loss that Roscoe must confront while inside. In this engrossing, vividly drawn debut, Reeves delivers a dazzlingly authentic portrait of a restless, remorseful mind.
