Checker and the Derailleurs: A Novel

Lionel Shriver

$13.99

Publication Date: August 4th, 2009

Publisher:

Harper Perennial

ISBN:

9780061711374

Pages:

368

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Description

“Ms. Shriver portrays [her characters] with psychological depth and wry humor, dramatizing a subject that’s rarely been exploited in fiction, and pulling off a novel that not only works, but rocks.” —New York Times Book Review

From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, a tender, hilarious story of youth and envy, ambition and rock and roll, hero worship and heroism, and, especially, love

Beautiful and charismatic, nineteen-year-old Checker Secretti is the most gifted and original drummer that the club-goers of Astoria, Queens, have ever heard. When he plays, conundrums seem to solve themselves, brilliant thoughts spring to mind, and couples fall in love. The members of his band, The Derailleurs, are passionately devoted to their guiding spirit, as are all who fall under Checker's spell. But when another drummer, Eaton Striker, hears the prodigy play, he is pulled inexorably into Checker's orbit by a powerful combination of envy and admiration. Soon The Derailleurs, too, are torn apart by latent jealousies that Eaton does his utmost to bring alive.

About the Author

Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

Praise for Checker and the Derailleurs: A Novel

“Shriver is a lively storyteller, and she keeps readers guessing to the end. . . . Checker and the Derailleurs, like its beguiling protagonist, is hard to forget.” — People

“Nothing if not lyrical, both in the internal assonances of its sentences...and in sentiment. It is fairy tale as well as theology, a domestic adventure story featuring wisdom.” — The New Yorker

“A funkily romantic novel...Shriver’s writing soars.” — Glamour

“A bittersweet, graceful, poetic yet clearsighted vision of the New York Tom Wolfe won’t tell you about. More than that, it is a tale about good and evil, and about the promise and pain of being nineteen.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Surprising, moving, and modern, wonderfully observed and wittily styled. It’s a cover version of some time-honored motifs by a writer with an acute, hip, and loving sensibility: as though Jane Austen listened to rock and roll.” — Amtrak Express

“Brilliant and funny; Checker lives on in memory as a complex fictional creation.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Some of the observations in this book are wrapped so tightly around my own experience of feelings, it seems I have been visited by the friend I always needed or the artist I always wanted to be. It honors the individual and reminds us all of the painful fullness of every soul.” — Grace Slick, former lead singer of Jefferson Airplane

“Shriver is a gifted, expansive writer, and her novel should be a big hit with rock music fans, who have been so poorly served by fiction writers in the past.” — Booklist

“Funny, clever, and touching. Shriver uses a few interesting narrative techniques, and peppers dialogue and exposition with quotations from rock. Her own lyrics are terrific. Recommended.” — Library Journal