Alligator

Description

Lisa Moore's Alligator moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O'Connor country. Madeleine, the driven, ageing filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredicatable dangers Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encountersColleen, at seventeen, a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive.

Reviews

'Compelling and rewarding ... surprisingly emotional, rich with human feeling and insight. Moore has a keen ear for both dialogue and a well-turned phrase, and the writing is suffused with a reckless joy' Robert J. Wiersema, Quill & Quire 'An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells' Richard Ford, author of Independence Day '[She] is from Newfoundland - a rare and fortunate inheritance for any novelist. But she can also flat-out write, and would be a major find even if she came from Kansas' Richard Ford, author of Independence Day

Author description

Lisa Moore's book of short stories, Open, was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (in 2002) and became a bestseller in Canada. She writes a biweekly column in the Canadian Globe and Mail and lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with her husband and two children.