Reprieve

Zusatztext "Smart and harrowing . . . tense, well-paced . . . a canny use of horror as metaphor for themes of guilt, race, and sexuality." Informationen zum Autor James Han Mattson is the acclaimed author of The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves . A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the recipient of awards from the Copernicus Society of America and Human-ities North Dakota. He was a featured storyteller on The Moth and has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Cape Town, the George Washington University, the University of Maryland, Murray State University, and the University of California–Berkeley. He is currently the fiction editor of Hyphen magazine. He was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in North Dakota. Klappentext "Like Whitehead's The Intuitionist, Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching or Zakiya Dalila Harris' The Other Black Girl, Reprieve straddles genres in the best possible way. . . . Sure to spark conversation and debate at book clubs across the land." ?LOS ANGELES TIMES ?An eventual American classic that is unrelenting in its beauty and incisive cultural critique.? ? KIESE LAYMON Recommended by New York Times • Los Angeles Times • NPR • Today • Esquire • O Quarterly • Boston Globe • Chicago Tribune • Harper's Bazaar • Shondaland • Thrillist • The Millions • Crimereads • XTRA • Tor • Literary Hub • and more! A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room?a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment. On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, ?reprieve,? they'll win a substantial cash prize?a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house's long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants. Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who's been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the United States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character's journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe. An astonishingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism to present an unsettling portrait of this tangled American life. Zusammenfassung "Like Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, Alyssa Cole’s When No One Is Watching or Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl , Reprieve straddles genres in the best possible way. . . . Sure to spark conversation and debate at book clubs across the land." – LOS ANGELES TIMES “An eventual American classic that is unrelenting in its beauty and incisive cultural critique.” – KIESE LAYMON Recommended by New York Times • Los Angeles Times • NPR • Today • Esquire • O Quarterly • Boston Globe • Chicago Tribune • Harper’s Bazaar • Shondaland • Thrillist • The Millions • Crimereads • XTRA   • Tor • Literary Hub • and more!

Relazione

"At some point while reading James Han Mattson's novel Reprieve, you'll think, 'This can't be real. This better not be real.' On its surface, Reprieve is about four ordinary people who venture into a haunted house for the chance of a monetary reward. You could say it's a story adjacent to The Haunting of Hill House, but even more disturbing. . . . As the book's horrifying events unfold, Reprieve can be read as a commentary on, or even an allegory of, American racism. Are we fighting to succeed in a fun house whose rewards aren't worth the pain? As a study of systems of power at their most perverse, Reprieve is a horror story, certainly, but it's not as scary as it is deeply disturbing." - BookPage
"Reprieve is a brilliant critique of contemporary society and culture." - Bay Area Reporter
"I'm not one who is often prone to horror, but this eerie novel about a death inside a full-contact escape room stretches the genre to eye-opening degrees. As Mattson fills out the backstories of the witnesses, he probes racial fetishism and far-right radicalization-among other topics far more terrifying than the frights inside the central haunted house." - Seija Rankin, Entertainment Weekly
"It's 1990s Nebraska, and a group of four contestants is close to completing an escape room known for its horrors. But when one of them is killed by an intruder, the survivors - including a love-struck international student who came to track down a former teacher and a grieving teenage girl - are left to reckon with a bigger challenge involving guilt, race and power." - New York Times, 20 New Works of Fiction to Read This Season
"Mattson presents a brilliant hybrid, a thought-provoking look at marginalization and systemic oppression expertly nestled inside a high-anxiety tale about the horror industry itself. . . . Severely unsettling at every turn, the book alternates the unrelenting tension of "the real world" with the in-your-face terror of the haunt, meaning there is no reprieve from the fear. This is a rare treat of a novel that will be devoured by fans of pulp horror titles like The Dark Game by Jonathan Janz and by those who like the juxtaposition of supernatural and real-world horrors found in the works of Victor LaValle." - Booklist (starred review)
"Mattson crafts a nail-biting horror saga while also implicating us in our sick obsession with horror. So too does the novel evoke blistering social horror, forcing us to reckon with how racism, prejudice, and complicity are more horrifying-and more fatal-than anything that goes bump in the night. Unrelenting and unforgettable, Reprieve is an American classic in the making." - Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire, The Best Books of Fall 2021
"Ambitious in scope . . . brutal, but astute and riveting." - Xtra, The Most Intriguing LGBTQ2S+ Releases
"Sharp as a razor's edge . . . Mattson's devious trick is in revealing America itself as a topsy-turvy house of horrors."
- O Quarterly, Fall Reading Spectacular
"It's hard to do justice to how awesome this book is without giving much away. . . . Reprieve is a self-aware and furious deconstruction of the horror novel, contrasting those who seek out fear with those who face the ever-present dangers of prejudice." - CrimeReads, Queer Crime Novels to Read All Year Long
"Smart and harrowing . . . tense, well-paced . . . a canny use of horror as metaphor for themes of guilt, race, and sexuality." - Publishers Weekly

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: James Han Mattson, James Han Mattsson
• Editore: William Morrow
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 05.10.2021
• EAN: 9780063079915
• ISBN: 978-0-06-307991-5
• Pagine: 416
• Categorie: Narrativa > Gialli; Romance, Romantic suspense, Narrative theme: Interior life, Psychological thriller, Holidays, events and seasonal interest, Relating to LGBTQ+ people, Satirical fiction and parodies, FICTION: Literary, FICTION: Romance / Suspense, LITERATURE: GENERAL FICTION, FICTION: Horror, FICTION: Cultural Heritage, FICTION: Psychological, LITERATURE: L G B T Q, FICTION: LGBTQ+ / General, FICTION: LGBTQ+ / Gay, FICTION: LGBTQ+ / Lesbian, Literature / General Fiction, Literature / LGBTQ