Alligator - Softcover

Lisa Moore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844081303 ISBN 13: 9781844081301

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

Lisa Moore's wickedly fresh first novella Canadian bestseller, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canadian and Caribbean region), and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year moves with the swiftness of an alligator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters mingling in contemporary St. John's, Newfoundland.

St. John's 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 17-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.

Alligator is a remarkable audiobook, a suspenseful, heartfelt, and sexy story that examines the ruthlessly reptilian and painfully human sides of all of us.

About this title

About the Author

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway. She lives in Brooklyn.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—The lives of several interconnected people in St. John's, Newfoundland, appear to be both ordinary and off the beaten path. Readers first meet teenage Colleen, who has just put sugar in the gas tanks of forest-clearing equipment-and been caught. Through her, they meet her aunt Madeleine, a middle-aged, self-absorbed indie filmmaker in the midst of making her crowning achievement. The woman leads the peripatetic life of an artist who is also responsible for finding the money to finance her projects. Widowed Beverly, Colleen's mother and Madeleine's sister, is trying to cope with her sorrow and not quite paying attention to her daughter. Other characters include Frank, who grew up poor and is saving his hard-earned money, and, living above him, Augustin, a ruthless Russian sociopath who's seen and done it all. He meets and sleeps with Isobel, a fading actress whose final "big" role will be in the film. The eponymous alligator appears in one of Madeleine's films that Colleen sees early on; near the book's end, she goes to Louisiana in a quest to meet the man attacked by the animal, who survived and runs an alligator farm. The plot is just sufficient enough to form a book, although there is a fiery climax. However, the best part is the fresh writing. There are frequent flashbacks, done seamlessly. With lively, real, expressive writing that pulls readers into the story, this slice-of-life novel will be popular with teens.—Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1844081303
• ISBN 13: 9781844081301
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320