Wednesday, September 5, 2018

GALVESTON by Nic Pizzolatto

This short, moody novel opens with a mob muscle/strongarm guy named Roy Cady finding out that he's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. While accepting his imminent death, he fatefully crosses paths with a young prostitute named Rocky who ends up on the run with him.  It's a gorgeously written debut novel with sequences that took my breath away. There's a scene where Roy visits an old girlfriend where you can feel his yearning for the past oozing out of the words, even while she remembers that past very differently. There are also tender scenes between Roy and Rocky where they open up to each other and you can truly feel the connection in the pages.
I wanted to shout, but it dawned on me that all my objections involved the future, and I didn’t really have one.
The atmosphere in this one hypnotized me. Pizzolatto's prose shines here; his writing is equal parts lyrical and woeful, at times filled with both beauty and brutality as he tells this story of two broken souls who first find each other at their most hopeless, but end up providing one another with a light in all the darkness.
You’re here because it’s somewhere. Dogs pant in the streets. Beer won’t stay cold. The last new song you liked came out a long, long time ago, and the radio never plays it anymore.
GRADE: A-

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