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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 35000000000465 | PS3551.M42 Y68 2018 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Now a major motion picture starring Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here is a gritty, harrowing story of corruption and one man's violent quest for vengeance.
Joe has witnessed things that cannot be erased. A former FBI agent and Marine, his abusive childhood has left him damaged beyond repair. He has completely withdrawn from the world and earns his living rescuing girls who have been kidnapped into the sex trade.
When he's hired to save the daughter of a corrupt New York senator held captive at a Manhattan brothel, he stumbles into a dangerous web of conspiracy, and he pays the price. As Joe's small web of associates are picked off one by one, he realizes that he has no choice but to take the fight to the men who want him dead.
Brutal and redemptive in equal measure, You Were Never Really Here is a toxic shot of a thriller, laced with corruption, revenge and the darkest of inner demons.
Author Notes
Jonathan Ames is a contributing writer to the New York Press and a comic monologist in the tradition of Spalding Gray. His first novel I Pass Like Night was published in 1989 and led to feature articles about Ames in USA Today and Vanity Fair.
Ames has performed at PS 122, Fez, the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe and the New York Public Library. His work has been anthologized in the Henfield Foundation Anthology and in an anthology edited by Joyce Carol Oates. He has worked as a taxi driver, au pair, fiction writing teacher and model.
He grew up in Orange, New Jersey, and currently resides in New York.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
Former FBI agent Joe, the hero of this superb short exercise in noir from Ames (Wake Up, Sir!), once specialized in rescuing human trafficking victims, until he was traumatized by finding 30 poisoned girls in the back of a truck. Blaming himself for not saving the girls, he went AWOL. Five years later, he works as a shadowy private operative for McCleary, a former New York state trooper. McCleary assigns Joe to help state senator Votto, a big Albany power broker whose 13-year-old daughter, Lisa, disappeared six months earlier after arranging a meeting with a stranger on Facebook. Votto finally gets a solid lead-a text stating that Lisa can be found in a Manhattan brothel. Joe's recovery mission goes horribly wrong, and Ames pulls no punches in his buildup to a grim conclusion that Jim Thompson devotees will appreciate. Evocative phrasing- "one or two ships blinked far away on the horizon, like fallen planets, and the ocean was a rolling black tongue, content for the time being to just taste the land"-is worth the price of admission alone. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
This white-hot short novel blasts through its 100 pages like a fireball stampeding through a tunnel. Joe, the soul-damaged veteran of child abuse, the marines, and the FBI, works as an off-the-grid vigilante, rescuing girls who have been kidnapped or sold into prostitution. His life is a revenge drama aimed at a wrong world, but this time the target becomes more personal, after Joe rescues the 13-year-old daughter of a New York state senator only to find that he has walked into a trap; the mobsters who run the bent senator retake the girl and leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake as they look for Joe. But Joe turns the tables and comes looking for them, packing his weapon of choice, a hammer, which he employs with the same icy authority as Adam Sternbergh's Spademan wielding his box cutter (Shovel Ready, 2014). There is more to come in this story Joe's work here is unfinished but most readers will relish a chance to catch their breath. Brutal, unrelenting, and utterly compelling, for those who don't mind being chased by a fireball. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Expect interest to pique when a film from Amazon Studios based on the novel and starring Joaquin Phoenix opens in February. Phoenix won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his portrayal of Joe.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2018 Booklist
