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Publisher: Graywolf Press
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Release
Date: October, 2004 |
ISBN: 1555974090
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Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Fiction |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer: Janine Peterson
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Reviewer
Notes: |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
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Tearjerker
By Daniel Hayes
A writer,
fed up with years of rejection, buys a gun and kidnaps an editor.
He keeps the editor in a basement prison he'd constructed, complete
with chain link fence, a treadmill, a TV, and bunk beds from Ikea
(they were on sale). So begins Daniel Hayes' first novel, Tearjerker.
The writer, Evan Ulmer, begins
to write about the experience, trying to determine his own motivation
in kidnapping the man, starting what might become his first successful
novel. The two men watch the abduction saga unfold on TV and in
newspapers. Evan meets the required love interest at the library,
a young girl named Promise.
The
writing is brilliant. I wondered more than once if I was reading
Evan's finished manuscript about the abduction or his thoughts during.
The story is interrupted occasionally with excepts from what seem
to be Evan's diaries, kept faithfully since he was a child. Promise,
also a writer-in-training, asks him about the novel he's working
on, if it's maybe inspired by the news stories about the kidnapped
editor. No, of course not, Evan answers. But Promise is writing
a novel of her own, in which a man named Evan starts dating a woman
like Promise's own mother. The world of written stories is so intertwined
with the "real world" that the reader will have difficulty
determining which is which.
Will
either character finish a novel? Will either character get published?
And what will Evan do with the man in his basement?
The
writing is so perfect, the narration so enticing and unreliable,
that any thinking reader will love every minute of it.
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