Jamestown
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A group of survivors arrive in Virginia from the demolished Manhattan, planning to establish an outpost, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. Plans go awry however in both violent and humorous manners. At the heart of the story is Pocahontas, who speaks Valley Girl, Ebonics, Old English, and Algonquin; sometimes all in the same sentence. And she pursues a heated romance with settler Johnny Rolfe via text messaging, instant messaging, and, ultimately, telepathy.
Deadly serious and seriously funny, Matthew Sharpe’s fictional retelling of one of America's original myths is a history of violence, a cross-cultural love story, and a tragicomic commentary on America’s past and present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A wonderfully warped piece of American deadpan, Sharpe's retelling of the Jamestown settlement has the settlers arriving in the Virginia swamp on a bus from Manhattan. There are numerous hints that civilization has taken some devastating hit, leaving Manhattan without oil or untainted food and engaged in a long war with Brooklyn. Hence, the venture into the wilds of the Southern states. The settlers are led by John Ratliff, whose mother's boyfriend is the CEO of Manhattan Company. The Indians, who speak English (a fact they try to dissemble), owe their "reddish" hue to their use of sunblock SPF 90. They're led by Powhatan and advised by Sidney Feingold and they lack guns. The story follows the traditional romantic arc, as Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, falls in love with one of the settlers, the lank, sallow, greasy-haired communications officer, Johnny Rolfe, and saves the life of another, Jack Smith. The narrative alternates first-person accounts, allowing Sharpe (The Sleeping Father) to weave his preternatural sense of parody into an increasingly dire story of killings and kidnappings. The chapters narrated by Pocahontas are virtuoso exercises in language, as MySpace lingo metamorphoses into Jacobin rhetoric, blackface dialect and back again. This is a tour-de-force of black humor.
