The Destroyers
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3,5 • 2 notes
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- 6,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
'The Destroyers is a smart, sophisticated literary thriller; for all its originality, it invokes the shades of Lawrence Durrell and Graham Greene' Jay McInerney, author of Bright, Precious Days
When Charlie and I were young, we played a game called Destroyers . . . We were sharpening our instincts, jettisoning attachments. We were honing strategies for survival ...
Ian Bledsoe is on the run, broke and humiliated, fleeing the emotional and financial fallout of his father's death. His childhood friend Charlie – rich, exuberant and basking in life on the Greek island of Patmos – is his last hope.
At first, Patmos is like a dream – sun-soaked days on Charlie’s yacht and the reappearance of a girlfriend from Ian’s past – and Charlie readily offers the lifeline he desperately needs. But, like Charlie himself, this beautiful island conceals a darkness beneath. When he vanishes leaving behind his murky business affairs, Ian finds himself caught in a terrifying labyrinth of deceits. As boys, the pair played a game called Destroyers – a game, he now realizes, they may never have stopped playing.
Expansive, vivid and suspenseful, in the vein of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, The Destroyers is a mesmerizing drama of power and fate, fathers and sons, self-invention and self-deception.
'Equal parts Graham Greene, Patricia Highsmith and F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Destroyers is at once lyrical and suspenseful, thoughtful and riveting' Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
‘The Destroyers manages to be both fast-paced and contemplative, an excellent entertainment and also something more lasting, a haunting meditation on friendship and desperation’ Guardian, Best Holiday Reads of 2017
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the third novel from the author of Orient, Ian Bledsoe flies to the Greek island of Patmos, "the quiet island of the Apocalypse," after the death of his father to try to get financial help from his childhood best friend, Charlie Konstantinou. Both young men come from affluent New York families but find themselves in precarious positions with their family inheritances. On the island, Ian meets Charlie's cluster of extravagant friends, including his college girlfriend, vacationing on her summer off from law school. When Charlie offers Ian a job at his yacht company, things begin to start looking up, despite the appearance of more and more dubious individuals, including a group of religious hippies, around the touristy island. Suddenly, Charlie goes missing and it becomes Ian's job to find his friend. Bollen manages to create a novel that is equal parts literary and thrilling. His beautiful sentences linger, and each of his characters have rich, complicated pasts that unfold over time. Though the ending is a bit rushed and leaves some loose threads, the novel ultimately offers a cinematic and insightful reflection on wealth and the horrendous things it can drive people to do, even to the ones they love.
Avis d’utilisateurs
Enjoyable, well written but...
A fun book, very well written and a gripping storyline. But as someone who has spent quite a lot of time in Greece, I found the people and descriptions of Patmos and in particular of Athens rather difficult to reconcile with my own experiences. Obviously, it’s fiction, but to me it felt like it was written by someone who had never actually been there. Leaving that aside it was still very enjoyable and definitely worth a read - it’s just I found so many of the interactions, especially early on, unbelievable and that left me struggling to really connect with the story on a personal level.