Caught - Hardcover

Moore, Lisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802122124 ISBN 13: 9780802122124

Publisher: Grove Press, 2014

Synopsis

Outsanding . . . Surprising and superb . . . A literary adventure story . . . Gripping, detailed, and wholly convincing . . . A supremely human book . . . combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.” National Post

"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read." Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers

Lisa Moore, Canada Reads” latest winner and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year author, is known for subtly crafted narratives that are at once sharp and impressionistic. Through an acute ear for dialogue and pared down prose, Moore's characters are startlingly present and instantly persuasive. In her new novel, Caught, Moore’s dangerously appealing new protagonist is unlike any she's imagined before: a modern Billy the Kid, a swaggering folk-hero-in-the making who busts out of prison to embark on one last great heist and win back the woman he loves.

Caught begins with a prison break. Twenty-five-year-old David Slaney, locked up on charges of marijuana possession, has escaped his cell and sprinted to the highway. There, he is picked up by a friend of his sister’s and transported to a strip bar where he survives his first night on the run. But evading the cops isn’t his only objective; Slaney intends to track down his old partner, Hearn, and get back into the drug business. Along the way, Slaney’s fugitive journey across Canada rushes vibrantly to life as he visits an old flame and adopts numerous guises to outpace authorities: hitchhiker, houseguest, student, lover. When finally he reunites with Hearn just steps ahead of a detective hell-bent on making a high-profile arrest, their scheme sends Slaney to Mexico, Colombia, and back again on an epic quest fueled by luck, charm, and unbending conviction.

Moore's most plot-driven novel to date, Caught is a thrillingly charged escapade that thrums with energy and suspense and deftly captures a moment in the late 1970s before the almost folkloric glamour surrounding pot smuggling turned violent. Ripe with bravado, love, ambition, and folly, Caught is about trust and deceit, about the risks we take for the lives we want and the mistakes we can’t outrun.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014: At the risk of annoying those who hate literary mashups, I’m declaring Caught to be “Huck Finn meets Les Miserables.” As those are two of my formative reading experiences, that’s no small statement. And this is no small book. On page one, the likeably misguided Daniel Slaney has just escaped a Canadian prison, where he’d been held on pot-running charges. Through the story of Slaney’s struggle to remain free, we soon learn that he’s already, in many ways, caught. Caught in a manipulative relationship with his childhood friend Hearn; caught in his doomed love for the women he left behind, and the child who’s not his. Other characters are similarly caged by circumstance, particularly the wounded, dogged detective Patterson, who pursues Slaney across Canada, to Columbia and Mexico, all the while admiring, even envying Slaney’s bravado attempt at freedom. They know each other, the hunter and his prey. They’re both caught in the lives they’ve chosen. Toward the end of this subtly brilliant and propulsive novel, Slaney is asked whether it’s best to just do the things he’s blamed for. Slaney’s reply: “I did them from the start.” There’s so much energy, wit, smarts and heart in Moore’s writing, though nothing feels forced or contrived. I enjoyed so many small, crystalline moments--sometimes tense, sometimes heart-rending--that made me sit back and think, “Wow.” (Flipping through my review copy, I see “Nice!” scribbled in the margins a dozen times.) Already an award-winner in Canada, Caught is captivating. --Neal Thompson

About the Author:

Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of February, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as one of The New Yorker's Best Books of the Year, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book; and Alligator, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Fiction Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and was a Canadian bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a Canadian bestseller.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0802122124
• ISBN 13: 9780802122124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336