Caught - Softcover

Moore, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802122957 ISBN 13: 9780802122957

Publisher: Grove Press, 2015

Synopsis

Moore combines the propulsive storytelling of a beach-book thriller with the skilled use of language and penetrating insights of literary fiction. She pulls it off seamlessly, creating a vivid, compulsively readable tale.” Penthouse

Shortlisted for the 2013 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Caught is a propulsive, adrenalin-drenched” (Globe and Mail) novel from 2013 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award winner Lisa Moore, which brilliantly captures a moment in the late 1970s before the almost folkloric glamour surrounding pot smuggling turned violent. Moore’s protagonist, David Slaney, is 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. As Slaney makes his fugitive journey across Canada tailed closely by a detective hell-bent on making an arrest Slaney reignites passions with his old flame; tracks down his former drug smuggling partner; and adopts numerous guises to outpace authorities: hitchhiker, houseguest, student, and lover. Thrumming with energy and suspense, Caught is a thrillingly charged escapade from one of Canada’s most acclaimed writers.

Outstanding . . . 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

A new kind of legend for a new Newfoundland.” Reader's Digest

Exhilarating a memorably oddball and alluring novel that’s simultaneously breezy, taut, funny, and insightful.” The Vancouver Sun

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 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0802122957
• ISBN 13: 9780802122957
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336