Man Gone Down
MICHAEL THOMAS
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41 reviews (2007) (432p)Visit this book's Amazon.com page >>
| Book Description |
| One of "The 10 Best Books of 2007"--The New York Times Book Review Evoking the work of great American masters such as Ralph Ellison, but distinctly original, Michael Thomas' first novel is a beautifully written, insightful, and devastating account of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of the unnamed narrator's thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. With only four days before he's due in to pick up his family, he must make some sense out of his life. Alternating between his past--as an inner city child bused to the suburbs in the 1970's--and a present where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother's abuses, his father's abandonment, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is an extraordinary debut about what it feels like to be pre-programmed to fail in life--and the urge to escape that sentence. |
| Michael Thomas Award Stats |
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| *Major Prize = Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award |
