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praise foR this is what we do
“A tight retro noir that’s as equally comfortable channeling The Stranger as it is George V. Higgins. But there’s also a sly anarchic subtext rumbling below the drugs-and-molls narrative, a welling need to bring plutocrat America to its knees. Where, of course, it belongs. This Is What We Do is a love story. Or, to be more accurate, it’s a story that’s in love with its own existential indifference. But it’s also Atlas Shrugged jammed in reverse and with the tires smoked. It’s Ayn Rand for people with a brain. And a gun. It’s a kick. Read it.”
—Sean Beaudoin, author of Welcome Thieves
“Hansen’s debut novel covers even wilder, trickier ground than his memoir, American Junkie. Anti-hero James Nethery seems an ordinary, lonely man drinking Coke at the bar, until he meets ‘Lily,’ a Ukrainian prostitute, and what began as a quiet, atmospheric meditation on down-and-out expats in Paris explodes into a nonstop, genre-blending noir-crime-vigilante-political-sexy-nihilistic-almost surreal thrill ride, infused in equal measures with brutality and beauty.”
—Gina Frangello, author of Every Kind of Wanting
“There’s what people say, and then there’s what they do. The phrase will infect your consciousness, contorting and twisting itself around to take on more and more dimensions. What does it mean to act on our desires when one person’s wish fulfillment means another’s nightmare? What does it mean to be free, or to escape? At its core, This Is What We Do gives us two people left with nothing, cutting close to the uncoolness of loving without fear.”
—Grace Krilanovich, author of The Orange Eats Creeps
This Is What We Do
Copyright © 2013, 2017 by Tom Hansen
First Counterpoint paperback edition: August 2017
Foreword copyright © 2017 by Lenore Zion
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hansen, Tom, 1942– author.
Title: This is what we do : a novel / Tom Hansen.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017024771 | eISBN 978-1-61902-969-9
Subjects: | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.A7223 T48 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024771
Cover designed by Jim Tillman
Book designed by Tabitha Lahr
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 . . . . . . . . . 2 1
To be is to do.
—Immanuel Kant
Foreword
by Lenore Zion
There’s this inane thing in the literary zeitgeist now; a sense that writers appear to have been brainwashed into believing that it is their moral responsibility to provide a comfortable, inclusive reading experience to any and all who open their books. This expectation that a novel should generate the sensation of being rocked to sleep by some sort of anesthetizing mother figure, singing you a soft lullaby, the lyrics of which are designed to personally flatter and validate as your protective mother figure shields you from facing the abrasive ghosts of reality that howl at the door.
Usually I am able to ignore this silliness, as it doesn’t affect me personally in any significant way, and really, when something over which you have no control is irritating to you, you’re an irresponsible asshole to keep staring at it until you become upset. But Tom Hansen’s This Is What We Do contrasts so gloriously with this embarrassing trend in literature that it’s impossible for me not to make a point of it.
It is fitting that Tom Hansen’s female protagonist, Lily, is harshly Ukrainian. She was a model, and now she’s a sex-worker—and you won’t catch her crying about it, because Lily was never under the impression that this outcome wasn’t the most likely scenario. The way Lily sees it, her physical beauty has always been her most easily exploited asset. She’s not thrilled by this, but she’s not so stupid that she won’t use to her advantage a lucky characteristic that can effectively be employed as a cash machine.
Lily is my favorite example of what I find so exciting about Hansen’s writing. She is, at once, a walking manifestation of the type of supernatural beauty standards by which less genetically blessed women feel crushed, and the aggressive reality of existing inside such a coveted female form. It’s this eye for the contradictory nature of reality in Hansen’s writing that engenders that low rumble of psychological discordance that I find appealing in a book. With this, Hansen offers a bona fide, complex emotional reaction, delivered subtly through the reflection of an honest and unflattering piece of the human experience.
Hansen was very thoughtful and purposeful when he designed his characters, but he successfully avoided the narcissistic temptation of falling in love with his own creations. As is true of any meaningful relationship in real life, Hansen hates his characters as much as he loves them. The consequence of this decision is that his readers now also must struggle with their own complicated feelings toward Hansen’s characters—but, from a writer to a reader, this is a gift. Rather than cushion us in a warm, fatty womb with easily-understood characters in an easily-understood world, Hansen has given us the permission and the freedom to love, hate, and hate-love his characters, for whatever reasons are real to us. In assuming his readers can handle the brutal image of the world he writes for us, he offers us what so many writers now rob us of: respect.
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