Alligator: A NovelA novel that “does for Newfoundland what Empire Falls did for dying smalltown Maine and The Sportswriter did for suburban New Jersey” (Publishers Weekly). Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O’Connor country. Its denizens jostle one another in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Colleen is a seventeen-year-old would-be ecoterrorist, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. Her mother, Beverly, is cloaked in grief after the death of her husband. Beverly’s sister, Madeleine, is a driven, aging filmmaker who obsesses over completing her magnum opus before she dies. And Frank, a young man whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers, is desperate to protect his hot-dog stand from sociopathic Russian sailor Valentin, whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters. This debut novel, which moves with swiftness of an alligator in attack mode through the lives of these brilliantly rendered characters, examines the ruthlessly reptilian, and painfully human, sides of all of us. “Glints with wit and jarring insight.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “An astonishing writer.” —Richard Ford |
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alligator arms asked Bannerman Park bed-sit Beverly bottle bowl breath bulldozers Carol cheeks chest close Colleen colour couldn’t dark David didn’t door dress drink Duffy everything eyes face feel felt film finger fist flicked floor Frank front girl glass gone hair hand hanging Harbour Grace he’d head heard hot dogs hot-dog stand hung Inuit Isobel John Harvey Julia Butterfly Hill Kevin kitchen knees knew leaned lifted light Lisa Moore looked Madeleine Marty mother Mount Pearl mouth move never Newfoundland night Old Perlican pine marten plastic pulled rain remember she’d shirt shoes shoulder shouted sleep smell someone spanworms stood street sugar bowl sweat talk taxi there’s they’d things thought told took tree truck turned Valentin waited walk wanted watched waterbed wave window woman wore