First published 1994
The narrator wakes up knowing which car will stop for him before it even slows down. He lives in a haze of drugs and bad decisions, drifting between hospitals, flooded houses, and the wreckage of other people's lives. When he decides to drive a shooting victim named McInnes to the hospital, he wants people to talk about his good deed. Later he tries to avenge a drug ripoff but only succeeds in terrorizing an innocent family. He steals copper wire from abandoned houses and watches a naked woman paraglide down a river. The woman turns out to be his accomplice's estranged wife, and the house once belonged to his partner. Each story follows the narrator through moments that feel like someone else's dream. He cheats and lies and steals, but he sees things with startling clarity. In a hospital hallway, he watches a wife learn her husband has died in a car crash and feels most alive listening to her grief.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, addiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Paperback · Faber and Faber
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, mental-illness