Cleaver
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Why would a man who has it all suddenly turn his back on the world at the height of his power? A celebrated journalist, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker, Harold Cleaver has just trounced the president in a damning television interview. But balancing Cleaver's success is the unbearable scrutiny of his elder son's equally damning roman à clef, Under His Shadow. Overweight and overwrought, Cleaver abruptly abandons his home, his wife, his mistresses, and, above all, television, the glowing box that brought him identity and power. He retreats high into the mountains to evade the numbing hold of e-mail, cell phones, and the endless chatter of public discourse. Weeks later-snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past, and humiliated by his inability to understand the locals on whom he relies for food and whiskey-Cleaver discovers that nowhere is so noisy and dangerous as the solitary mind.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Through terse, confrontational prose, Parks puts on display the self-absorbed and egotistical mind of notable British journalist and womanizer Harold Cleaver. After sticking it to the unnamed (though unmistakable) current president of the United States in a television interview, Cleaver should be on top of the world. But his son's just-released damning roman- -clef, In His Shadow, disrupts Cleaver's life and moment of glory. Cleaver sequesters himself in the German mountains inside a remote, ratty cottage the former home of a now-deceased Nazi soldier and finds that while he can flee his fast-paced existence, his psyche is not so easily quieted. With a doll named Olga and a dog named Uli as his only companions, Cleaver finds himself in constant debate about his deceased daughter, Angela, his attempt to replace her through extra-marital affairs, and his son's betrayal. As Cleaver battles his demons and tries to come to terms with his past, his food supply diminishes and a bruising blizzard rages outside. Parks (Europa) gives readers a robust protagonist riddled with doubt, and the path he sends him down is both treacherous and cathartic.