3.5
The Long Take
ByPublisher Description
**Finalist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize**
**Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize for Innovative Fiction, and the Roehampton Poetry Prize**
From the award-winning British author—a poet's noir narrative that tells the story of a D-Day veteran in postwar America: a good man, brutalized by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it, yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.
Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can't return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he finds his way from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but—as those dark, classic movies made clear—the country needed outsiders to study and to dramatize its new anxieties. Both an outsider and, gradually, an insider, Walker finds work as a journalist, and tries to piece his life together as America is beginning to come apart: riven by social and racial divisions, spiraling corruption, and the collapse of the inner cities. Robin Robertson's fluid verse pans with filmic immediacy across the postwar urban scene—and into the heart of an unforgettable character—in this highly original work of art.
**Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize for Innovative Fiction, and the Roehampton Poetry Prize**
From the award-winning British author—a poet's noir narrative that tells the story of a D-Day veteran in postwar America: a good man, brutalized by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it, yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.
Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can't return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he finds his way from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but—as those dark, classic movies made clear—the country needed outsiders to study and to dramatize its new anxieties. Both an outsider and, gradually, an insider, Walker finds work as a journalist, and tries to piece his life together as America is beginning to come apart: riven by social and racial divisions, spiraling corruption, and the collapse of the inner cities. Robin Robertson's fluid verse pans with filmic immediacy across the postwar urban scene—and into the heart of an unforgettable character—in this highly original work of art.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Long Take Reviews
3.5
“A beautiful noir novel that is written like a noir film itself- I have never read anything like it. Stunning and reflective meditation on post-war Los Angeles. There were parts of this book I didn’t understand. Either I wasn’t meant to understand them or my brain is too fried from working on my dissertation all day that I’ve lost my ability to read a book well.”
“This book is a Canadian soldier suffering terribly from the effects of WW2 tries to build a life for himself in LA. A wonderful experiment and a beautiful, harrowing account of PTSD. Author wrote the book in poetic prose manner with story and poetry mixed with serious baritone and gripping experience of reader.
He finds work as a reporter but is haunted constantly by memories of what he has seen and done during the war. And the reminders are everywhere - explosions as buildings are torn down and rebuilt; new year's celebration fireworks; scores of homeless, drunk vets on the streets who taken a bad turn in life and now , not able to handle themselves and country is not doing enough and mental health issue concepts was not there when they came back from war, so frustration get to them preety easily .
This is a brutal tale with bleak of hope that thing may get better in future , written mostly as a longform poem, could have been gimmicky. But it works wonderfully for readers. Telling a novel-length story in this way opens new doors for the new genre in literature and writers who want to say there stories and express themselves new way. Surely, characterisation is harder in this format, but a new world of imagery is suddenly possible. Some sections describing the city are as beautiful as any I've read. And the flashbacks to WW2 battlefields are shocking, raw and hugely affecting”
About Robin Robertson
ROBIN ROBERTSON was brought up on the northeast coast of Scotland and now lives in London. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has published five collections of poetry and has received a number of honors, including the Petrarca-Preis, the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and all three Forward Prizes. His selected poems, Sailing the Forest, was published in 2014. In the UK, The Long Take has won the 2018 Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
www.robinrobertson.co.uk
www.robinrobertson.co.uk
Other books by Robin Robertson
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