Sugar Street
Published on 5. October 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-4721-5199-5 (ISBN)
Description
'An original and fascinating concept that'll keep you hooked and turning the pages' Sunday Post
'Expertly done' The Times
'[A] compelling, original novel' Independent
In Jonathan Dee's explosive novel, an unnamed male narrator has hit the road with a large sum of cash stashed under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he meets a city where his past is unlikely to track him down. Renting a room from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions, he seems to have escaped his former self. But can he?
In a story that moves with swift dark humour and insight, Dee takes us through his narrator's attempt to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence. Having opted out of his material possessions and human connections, the pillars of his new self - simplicity, kindness, and above all invisibility - grow shakier as he butts up against the daily lives of his neighbours in their politically divided working-class city.
Sugar Street is a risky, engrossing and visceral story about a white man trying to escape his own troubling footprint and start his life over.
'Expertly done' The Times
'[A] compelling, original novel' Independent
In Jonathan Dee's explosive novel, an unnamed male narrator has hit the road with a large sum of cash stashed under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he meets a city where his past is unlikely to track him down. Renting a room from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions, he seems to have escaped his former self. But can he?
In a story that moves with swift dark humour and insight, Dee takes us through his narrator's attempt to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence. Having opted out of his material possessions and human connections, the pillars of his new self - simplicity, kindness, and above all invisibility - grow shakier as he butts up against the daily lives of his neighbours in their politically divided working-class city.
Sugar Street is a risky, engrossing and visceral story about a white man trying to escape his own troubling footprint and start his life over.
Reviews / Votes
I don't know when I've been as jolted and delighted by the ending of a novel as I recently was by the ending of Sugar Street, a deft punch of a novel by Jonathan Dee, that had the phrase "an American Dostoyevsky" running around in my head. Dee creates a true page-turner out of simple materials and the result is a troubling and stimulating look at real American life - at the fix that materialism plus the information state has got us into. It's also very funny -- George Sanders Dee's subtle skill lies in how seductive he makes all this strenuous rationalising on the narrator's part . . . Sugar Street's symbolism does just as much to keep you on edge, bringing us queasily close to a self-cancelling antihero who is simultaneously sent up and - you suspect - just a little bit admired * Observer * Part of the power of Sugar Street lies in its style . . . in the prose you can feel the adrenaline of [the protagonist's] initial flight wearing off , his life shrinking down to a couple of city blocks . It's brilliantly done * Guardian * This one will keep you guessing . . . An original and fascinating concept that'll keep you hooked and turning the pages * The Sunday Post * Pacy and disturbing * Mail on Sunday * [A] compelling, original novel * Independent * The politics of the story become explicit, terrifyingly so, in its final pages... Sugar Street ends by packing a punch that the reader won't see coming * Prisma * Possessing the pace and plot surprises of a thriller, Dee's novel also manages to be a searing portrait of contemporary America * Choice * Dee's style is clean, raw, terse [and] perfectly paced. The voice conveys a yearning for something better against a bone-deep cynicism... You sure won't see the ending coming * Financial Times * A propulsive thriller * Observer * Sugar Street is expertly done, with a good balance of provocative thinking and surprising developments * The Times * This is an elegant, spare and thoroughly engaging novel, with a narrator who goes from potential bad guy to potential victim... and a genuinely affecting questioning of whether it's possible to do the "right thing" without incurring judgment -- Claire Looby * Irish Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 124 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
184 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4721-5199-5 (9781472151995)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Jonathan Dee is the author of seven novels, including The Locals, A Thousand Pardons, and The Privileges, which was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, he teaches in the graduate writing program at Syracuse University.