Checker and the Derailleurs
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- 55,00 kr
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- 55,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
From the Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a novel about what it takes to make it in music. How charisma is worth its weight in gold. And how jealously can grow until it has eaten away at a musician’s heart.
He has that thing that they’d all pay for but can’t buy: on stage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker’s Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood’s affections.
An examination of the passion, the jealousy and the friendship of young musicians trying to break out, Checker and The Derailleurs is also about cycling, rock lyrics, glass blowing, the marriage of convenience, and—most of all—the mystery of joy.
Reviews
‘Shriver is a lively storyteller, and she keeps readers guessing to the end. . . . Checker and the Derailleurs, like its beguiling protagonist, is hard to forget’ People Magazine
‘Checker triumphant is the key, a boy so radiant that his creator (she wrote The Female of the Species) has fallen in love with him. And so has the reader’ Publisher’s Weekly
‘Funny, clever, and touching’ Library Journal
About the author
Lionel Shriver’s novels include the National Book Award finalist So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lively bunch of 19-year-old club musicians, the Derailleurs, who animate the pages of this engaging novel, derives much of its spirit from its drummer, Checker Secretti, their philosophical and musical guru. But a rival drummer, the natty, not-quite-top-drawer Eaton Striker, is profoundly jealousy of Checker, endlessly goading the band to get out of Plato's nightclub in Astoria, Queens, and into Manhattan. Checkerblue-eyed, half Italian, half blackowns Astoria, from the arch of the Triborough to the squat Hellgate, writes songs about it, beats out its rhythms on his drums. His single-minded attention to his band and his city, however, has been deflected by Syria Paramus, a glassblower, whose person and profession knock Checker flat out. When Checker hides Rahim, an illegal-alien Iraqi, from an immigration officer and persuades Syria to marry him, Eaton, who has watched the electricity between Checker and Syria, gets to work. Intrigue begets suspicion, until Checker walks out of Plato's and over to Syria's. At this point, destruction and near-tragedy ensue. But Checker triumphant is the key, a boy so radiant that his creator (she wrote The Female of the Species) has fallen in love with him. And so has the reader.