Awards

• Short-listed for Booker Prize for Fiction 2000
• Short-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2002
• Short-listed for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2002
• Shortlisted for Booker Prize for Fiction 2000.
• Shortlisted for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2002.
• Shortlisted for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2002.

Overview

It is the mid-80s in post-industrial America. In a small town graced with the decaying hulks of defunct factories, young journalist and college dropout Bill churns out lengthy essays on the death of industry and of America itself for The Daily Truth, whose scoops rarely rise above the latest home-bake contest. The static summer is punctured when local bad boy Ronny Lawton reports his father missing. A dismembered finger is found and all suspect the son of murdering his hated father, but nothing can be proved. The sorry tale of the white trash Lawtons hypnotises the town and Ronny Lawton becomes a local icon. Bill becomes increasingly obsessed with the story - he gets involved with Ronny's estranged wife, finds a decomposing human head and ends up as a suspect in the murder case himself. Things come to a head and Ronny Lawton holds his wife, child and Bill hostage in a confrontation with the FBI.

Full Product Details

9780753811023

Table of Contents

Reviews

Young Bill is an intrepid journalist, eager to paint the world in print with the truth as he sees it. Having been handed the tradition of writing for the town paper by its founder, his grandfather, Bill wrestles with its flaccidity and against the rigidity of his editor, Sam Perkins. Bill longs to insert lines such as 'It's not hard to find casualties. What's hard is to get people to admit they are casualties,' but more usually he's stuck with reporting events such as the Auxiliary Firemen's Wives' bakeoff. Living as he does in a dying industrial town in the Midwest, he points out that he can play the maverick when he chooses. Of course, the introduction to this laconic and deceptively laid-back novel sets the dry brushwood in place for some real news to spark. When local layabout Ronny Lawton reports his father missing, the finger points firmly at him - his father's missing finger, that is, which is discovered by the police on the basement steps at the Lawton house. As the prospect of some real live violence enlivens the sleepy town, Bill is sucked further into the mystery than he intends, and Collins, a master of narrative suspense, keeps his hero on the brink. Disturbing, pacy and full of incident, you won't be able to put this down. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Michael Collins was born in 1964. He was educated in Belfast, Dublin and Chicago. His short stories have been awarded the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award in Ireland and the Pushcart Prize in America. THE KEEPERS OF TRUTH was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the International IMPAC literary award in 2000. He is also the author of THE RESURRECTIONISTS, a volume of short stories, THE FEMINISTS GO SWIMMING and several other books.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available