Dope: A Novel
A raw, explosive, genre-bending tour de force destined for comparison with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. Josephine Flannigan should be dead by now. From an overdose, or a cop's bullet, or run down in some back alley. But after a childhood in Hell's...
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A raw, explosive, genre-bending tour de force destined for comparison with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. Josephine Flannigan should be dead by now. From an overdose, or a cop's bullet, or run down in some back alley. But after a childhood in Hell's Kitchen and a lifetime on drugs, by 1950 she's finally cleaned up her act and gotten out of trouble-or so she thinks. Things start to look up for Josephine when a suburban couple offers her $1000 to help find their daughter, a Barnard student who's disappeared into the dark subculture of heroin addiction. But nothing is as simple as it seems. Joe's journey back into a world she thought she'd left behind becomes more vertiginous at every turn-a harrowing descent into deceit and manipulation that makes it impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and leads her to a choice that will haunt her to the end of her days.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780399153457 (0399153454)
Publish date: February 2nd 2006
Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
Pages no: 256
Edition language: English
1950s, New York City, light ages before the famous ‘no tolerance’ policy of Mayor Giuliani. Josephine Flannigan, 36, tries to make her living as a former heroin addict. She is a skilled con artist, a shrewd shoplifter and, generally, whatever anybody wants her to be providing they pay cash. She doe...
Sara Gran is becoming one of my favorite writers, and this little gem is my favorite of her books so far. It was close enough to perfect that I rounded it up to 5 stars despite finding the ending a little abrupt and confusing. I think I sorted out the details, but I had to stop and think it through ...
After reading Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead--a smart, alternative noir mystery--I was left craving for more. Dope, an earlier novel with some of the same gritty vibe, is set in the petty thieving underworld of 1950’s New York, a place that in no way resembles anything from Happ...
A 30-something former addict is hired by a wealthy couple to find their college-age junkie daughter in 1950's New York City.This is certainly a page-turner. The original mystery becomes more complex, with various twists and turns in the plot. There's something happening almost constantly. The protag...
More like 2 1/2 stars. This starts promising but fizzles in the end even with the surprise ending. The 50's New York is well done, so is the drug scene. The problem is more one of character motivation and a weak lead character. Not every character can be pull off a Philip Marlowe. Josephine doesn't...
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