Barker House
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
"HERE is a voice to listen to! Moloney's voice is as true as a voice can be. Concise, with the right details rendered perfectly, these sentences come to the reader with marvelous straight forwardness, clean as a bone."--Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge meets The Mars Room in this powerfully unsentimental work of fiction--a portrait of nine lives behind the concrete walls of a New Hampshire jail.
David Moloney's Barker House follows the story of nine unforgettable New Hampshire correctional officers over the course of one year on the job. While veteran guards get by on what they consider survival strategies--including sadistic power-mongering and obsessive voyeurism--two rookies, including the only female officer on her shift, develop their own tactics for facing "the system." Tracking their subtly intertwined lives, Barker House reveals the precarious world of the jailers, coming to a head when the unexpected death of one in their ranks brings them together.
Timely and universal, this masterfully crafted debut adds a new layer to discussions of America's criminal justice system, and introduces a brilliant young literary talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moloney's taut, haunting, and surprisingly hopeful debut takes an unblinking look at America's criminal justice system. Built as a series of linked stories that pivot between the perspectives of nine officers who work at a bleak New Hampshire jail including veterans such as Leon, who works in the kitchen; Big Mike, who moonlights as a strip club bouncer; and rookie Brenner, the only female recruit the narrative tracks the events of a year as characters endure family tragedy, romantic entanglements begin and fade, marriages crumble, and officers die. But no matter what's going on outside the jail's walls, it's the workplace frustrations and power struggles within that dominate everyone's attention and inescapably shape them. The author, himself a veteran corrections officer, anchors the stories with quotidian details of prison life and a viscerally drawn setting that leaps off the page. One officer likens his unit to a slaughterhouse, filled with "old, shed animal matter" and stains that "look like scars from hacking tools." This strong work is an indelible look at how people respond to extremes and fight to hold on to their humanity in dire conditions.
