The King is Dead (Paperback, New ed)

A legacy of instability and alienation plagues two generations in this ruthlessly compact third outing by Lewis (Why the Tree Loves the Ax, 1999, etc.). A tricky structure that involves leaps forward and backward in time and seemingly unrelated subplots eventually discloses connections between WWII hero and political functionary Walter Selby and his son Frank, a film actor whose burden of untold family secrets propels him into early retirement. The story's first half depicts Walter's infatuation with his eventual wife, beautiful, distractible Nicole Lattimore; his disillusioning tenure as aide to Tennessee's manipulative governor; and Walter's heartbroken discovery of Nicole's infidelity, after which he shoots her to death and is sent to prison. The second half portrays Frank as a foster child (who takes the surname of his "new" parents the Cartwrights) raised with his younger sister Gloria in ignorance of their family's past; a teenager obsessed with a seductive classmate (Kimmie Remington) on her way to becoming an irreversible paranoid schizophrenic; and a middle-aged divorced father whose buried energies are reawakened when aging film queen Lenore Riviere tempts him with a "riddling" story of a bastard prince's moral quandary involving his betrayed father and adulterous mother (which is, incidentally, the source of Lewis's title). There are also loosely related episodes featuring a murdered lottery winner and an itinerant Native American, and inexplicably, the full text of Casey Stengel's testimony before Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver's Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee. Lewis doesn't pull all these materials together, but does create some smashing effects in his denouement, as Frank travels to his dying father's bedside seeking the answer to the "riddle" that embraces father and son alike: "Where does a man go, if he's done wrong?" The tale's circuitous, cryptic organization is daunting, but Lewis's crisp, forthright style and arresting character portraits lead toward a most satisfying payoff. (Kirkus Reviews)

A soulful, illuminating novel of love, murder and redemption, from a rising star on the American literary scene. One hot, dark night in Memphis, Walter Selby finds himself wandering alone in the parking lot outside a baseball stadium, trying to find his friend. Instead he finds his future wife, Nicole, illuminated by the headlights of a passing car. In that empty car-lot, the perfect setting for an archetypal American romance, they begin a long, lovely fall - into bed, into marriage, into parenthood, into responsibility. A generation later Walter's son Frank, now a grown man himself, is also alone in Memphis, trying to find a trace of two parents who faded from view while he was still a child. His sister Gail is building a new family for herself on the other side of the continent, while his precious daughter Amy slips further from him with each passing year. Frank's life seems to be racing away in a flurry of wrong decisions and lost moments, with nothing to show for it. And yet if Frank's life is anywhere, it is in his family, in these men and women, their lives and their passing. This is their story.

General

Imprint:	HarperPerennial
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	May 2004
Authors:	Jim Lewis
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	272
Edition:	New ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-00-713524-0
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-00-713524-6
Barcode:	9780007135240

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