Coronado
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2.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle... A young girl, caught up in an inner-city gang war, crosses the line from victim to avenger... An innocent man is hunted by government agents for an unspecified crime... A boy and a girl fall in love while ransacking a rich man's house during the waning days of the Vietnam War... A compromised psychiatrist confronts the unstable patient he slept with... A father and a son wage a lethal battle of wits over the whereabouts of a stolen diamond and a missing woman.
In turn suspenseful, surreal, romantic, and tragically comic, these tales journey headlong into the heart of our myths - about class, gender, freedom, and regeneration through violence - and reveal that the truth waiting for us there is not what we'd expect.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lehane (Mystic River) hints in the first of these five richly vernacular (and, save one, previously published) stories and one play that "a small town is a hard place to keep a secret." In "Running Out of Dog," two Vietnam vets return to their hometown of Eden, S.C., and become tragically entangled with the wife of a man whose rich family kept him out of the war. Class resentment similarly erupts in "Gone Down to Corpus," set in back-water Texas, 1970, as a group of high school football players breaks into the house of rich kid Lyle, who fumbled the big pass at the last game. They drunkenly wreck the house and are shocked by the appearance of Lyle's younger sister, Lurlene, who is eager to join the party. The collection's centerpiece is "Until Gwen," which has also been adapted by Lehane into a two-act play, Coronado. Transcribed, the play revolves around the edgy reunion of a hustler father and his son, Bobby, newly released after four years in prison. It quickly becomes apparent that Bobby's father has retrieved him only to find out where the heist loot is hidden, and Bobby, in turn, needs to know what happened to his girlfriend, Gwen. Powerfully envisioned lives, recounted unflinchingly.
Customer Reviews
Coronado
I think I've read every other book Dennis Lehane has ever written, and they are, without exception, brilliant - especially the Kenzie & Genarro stuff, but I've just finished Coronado and I still don't have a clue what it's about.
If I'd bought this in paperback from some author I'd never read, I'd have binned it after the first chapter (stage? Act?). Because it was Dennis Lehane, and his books are great, I kept going - it was bound to come clear and be great.
Maybe "literary" people will love it, but if you want a gritty crime thriller I don't think this is it. I still don't know if it's meant to be - a collection of short stories or what? I've read the entire book - except for the manuscript of a play at the end, and I still don't have the faintest idea what it was about. I've waisted hours I could have spent reading a great story.
Don't let this put you off Dennis Lehane -his other stuff is brilliant, but This seems to be the sort of thing written for a discussion group - Of course, I could just be thick?