Train

Zusatztext 52646313 Informationen zum Autor Pete Dexter Klappentext Train is an 18-year-old black caddy at an exclusive L.A. country club. He is a golf prodigy, but the year is 1953 and there is no such thing as a black golf prodigy. Nevertheless, Train draws the interest of Miller Packard, a gambler whose smiling, distracted air earned him the nickname "the Mile Away Man." Packard's easy manner hides a proclivity for violence, and he remains an enigma to Train even months later when they are winning high stakes matches against hustlers throughout the country. Packard is also drawn to Norah Still, a beautiful woman scarred in a hideous crime, a woman who finds Packard's tendency toward violence both alluring and frightening. In the ensuing triangular relationship kindness is never far from cruelty. In Train, National Book Award-winning Pete Dexter creates a startling, irresistibly readable book that crackles with suspense and the live-wire voices of its characters.PART ONE PHILADELPHIA January, 1948 At this point in the story, Packard had never fallen in love, and didn't trust what he'd heard of the lingo (forever, my darling, with all my heart, till the end of time, more than life itself, with every fiber of my being, oh my darling Clementine, etc.). It sounded out of control to him, and messy. He had spent maybe a thousand Sundays in church, though--make that four hundred--and then two edgy years on a battleship in the Pacific Ocean, and then five very edgy days in the Pacific Ocean without the battleship, and before any of that, he'd deliberately and often put himself in places where he saw awful things happen not only to people who deserved it, but also to people who just seemed to stumble in at the wrong time, walking into the picture as the shutter clicked through no fault of their own. Which is to say that by now Packard recognized praying when he heard it, and knew the kind of the deals people would offer up, the promises they would make, when they were in over their heads. And that, from what he'd heard, was what it--love--was about. Later on, however, something in the feminine line in fact came along, custom-fit, and Packard, to his enormous surprise, found himself ape-shit in tow. Although not every-fiber-of-my-being ape-shit in tow. Of long habit, Packard only gave in quietly, without losing his dignity. And much later on, when he was tamed and had the advantages of maturity and the long view, he would come to realize that everything that had happened was inevitable, that he was after all a human being, and it was therefore not in his nature to keep things simple. Even the psychologist who did the pre-employment interview had seen something on Packard's horizon. "Perhaps," he said, "you need someone to share this with." Packard had just described for the psychologist not his loveless life but his battleship, the Indianapolis, burning to the waterline in the night, and the days and nights of floating around in the Pacific Ocean with the sharks and burned and dying shipmates. The sharks came morning and evening, at meal time, and stayed about as long as it would take you to eat dinner. Packard to this day did not eat at regular hours, but aside from that, on the occasions when he asked himself how he felt, he felt approximately like the same person. People he'd known before the war, on the other hand, said he'd changed, but he couldn't see it himself. As his grandmother had pointed out along time ago, he wasn't a real sweetheart to begin with. Packard, by the way, had not brought any of this up to the psychologist himself. All he wanted was a job, and all the psychologist wanted was to keep his job, and he was required by the city's insurers to review applicants' military records and inquire specifically in regard to purple hearts. The psychologist had a certain baritone mann...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Pete Dexter
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.02.2005
• EAN: 9780375714092
• ISBN: 978-0-375-71409-2
• Pagine: 288
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 204 mm x 15 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Gialli