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Dixon, Stephen ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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INTERSTATE (A Novel)
Dixon, Stephen
1995 6988 What would you do if you were driving on the highway with your two daughters and the goons you had noticed with only passing irritation shadowing you in the next lane started shooting? And what would you do once you realized that one of the girls - your beautiful child - lay silent and unconscious, dying of her wounds? This terrible moment when what is literally unimaginable becomes, even for an instant, an inescapable, horrific reality serves as the mainspring for a series of eight interrelated narratives that set about exploring not only the nature and consequences of violence - both real & imagined - but also the richly textured mind and imagination of a representative modern man. A stylistic tour de force, a hypnotic, multifaceted vision of American mayhem, Interstate is also a paean to the visceral truth that a parent's greatest love is for his child. It is an unforgettable reading experience. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Dixon's 1991 novel, Frog, earned him NBA and PEN/Faulkner nominations. His latest, Interstate, is equally distinctive and imaginative in portraying human peculiarities and the search for order in the seemingly irrational and meaningless contemporary American universe. The novel brilliantly explores the alterations of memory, trauma and guilt in parents whose children have been casualties of violence. Like all of Dixon's work, it is a demanding read; the edgy, insistent, run-on dialogue, in particular, requires focused attention. The story is told eight times. While the inciting incident remains the same, with each retelling, new dimensions are added to or subtracted from the plot and characters. The question Dixon raises is what really haunts us: What would you do if the unthinkable happened? The critical event is this: a father is driving home on the highway with his little girls in the back seat; some men in a minivan drive up alongside and shoot through the window, killing one of the girls. In offering different scenarios from this point on, Dixon challenges the reader to leap imaginatively into the experience. One father risks his marriage, his relationship with his remaining child and his freedom to find the killer. Another makes his dead child's memory into a religion, praying the hospital will tell him ``she's saved," although he knows she's dead. With each variation Dixon implicitly asks: How can you be sure the incident happened the way you remember, or the way you've been told? Reading Interstate is like being a passenger in a car speeding along the highway of the mind, swerving in and out of what is real and imagined, on the edge of losing control yet not losing it, because the driver knows what he's doing. With characteristic directness, Dixon's crisis-mode narrative runs together in one seemingly jumbled, breathless rush, with evocative thoughts causing memories to surface not just in the minds of the narrators but in the reader's mind as well. Jarringly perceptive and darkly compelling, this novel will confirm Dixon as a writer of stature. Author tour. (May) Library Journal Now here's a novel idea: a work in which each of eight chapters consists entirely of a single long paragraph. But there's a method to Dixon's seeming stylistic madness, and this follow-up to his acclaimed Frog (a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner award; reviewed in LJ 1/92) is in fact a case of form following function. The eight narratives are alternative replays of a terrible, defining moment that transpires in the book's opening pages: an act of random violence in which a man and his two daughters are shot at by punks in a passing van, and one of the girls is killed. Dixon's dense, plain-spoken prose perfectly mirrors the chaotic workings of a mind riddled with rage and guilt, where every thought and utterance is second-guessed. A timely, disturbing work that belongs in every fiction collection. Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated 0-8050-2654-1 / 9780805026542
Hardcover As New New York
Price:
16.15 USD
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