Kirjahaku

Nick Ray lives in a world where everything is for sale. University Ph.D.s, pig fetuses, bomb shelters, and vending-machine-dispensed live bait, to name just a few. But for the first time in a long time, Nick Ray finally has something to sell.Determined to be covert about an affair he's having with a woman already spoken for (by another woman), Nick buys the cheapest computer he can find at a local pawn shop, only to discover that the hard drive contains the names and addresses of dozens of members of the Witness Protection Program.Partnering with a hulking Russian gangster with the world's worst fashion sense and a disbarred lawyer who drinks rocket fuel, Nick decides to take advantage of his unique discovery. Yet despite the impressive credentials of this entrepreneurial dream team, Nick soon learns that having something to sell can end up simply making you a valuable commodity to someone else wanting to make a big score ...

From a writer Steve Almond calls "the master of the down and out that just got worse" comes a collection of stories that live vividly in the readerÆs memory long after the final page has been turned. Taking place in a world of desperate people who cling to hope, but have few expectations, Roberge introduces us to a motley crew of cripples, drug addicts, former child actors, chimpanzee boxers, exterminators, and assorted criminals. These desperate, boldly original stories are distinguished by a stark prose reminiscent of Denis Johnson or Lorrie Moore, but are, ultimately, all their own—powerful, riveting, deeply felt, and darkly funny.

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. When Rob Roberge learns that he's likely to have developed a progressive memory-eroding disease from years of hard living and frequent concussions, he is terrified by the prospect of becoming a walking shadow. In a desperate attempt to preserve his identity, he sets out to (somewhat faithfully) record the most formative moments of his life. But the process of trying to remember his past only exposes just how fragile the stories that lay at the heart of our self-conception really are. As LIAR twists and turns through Roberge's life, it turns the familiar story of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll on its head. Darkly funny and brutally frank, it offers a remarkable portrait of a down and out existence cobbled together across the country, from musicians' crashpads around Boston to a painful moment of reckoning in the scorched Wonder Valley desert of California. As Roberge struggles to keep addiction and mental illness from destroying the good life he has built in his better moments, he is forced to acknowledge the increasingly blurred line between the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves.