We're In Trouble
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'I would like to claim that I discovered Christopher Coake but you can't really discover writers like this: the quality of the work is so blindingly obvious he was never going to labour in obscurity for any length of time ... We're In Trouble is, for the most part, a book about death - quite often, about how death affects the young ... Sometimes, when you're reading the stories, you forget to breathe, which probably means that you read them with more speed than the writer intended ... They're beautifully written, and they have bottom ... striking and dramatic' Nick Hornby, Believer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his striking debut collection, Coake considers how character is revealed under pressure. The title story is a stunner, a series of three vignettes in which a young man recalls a tragic accident, two lovers witness a death and a married couple grapple with the husband's terminal cancer. A misfit couple breaks into an Upper Peninsula cabin, but find themselves trapped in a blizzard in "Abandon." In "Cross Country," a man estranged from his wife takes their young son on a road trip; several shifts in point of view from father, to son, to an outside observer throw the dynamics of their relationship into question and blur the lines between love and menace. The story concludes with an ambiguous gesture made with protective intent: "He tightens his grip on the wheel, and concentrates instead on what he knows: the flat horizon stretched out ahead. The soft warmth of the boy's neck. His hand resting on it. The way his fingers curl, to fit its shape." "A Single Awe" introduces Dana, a married woman tormented by adulterous thoughts. Her husband is a good but dull man, and the selfless act of heroism that won her love also revealed her own limitations. With unadorned but dramatic, economical prose, Coake explores the human capacity for altruism and cowardice in these high-stakes tales.
