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The Delivery Man: A Novel
by Joe McGinniss Jr.
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$14.00 |
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$11.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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$2.80 (20%) |
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Paperback
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Black Cat
Soon cell phones will start ringing and the men will be calling and then the girls will be fighting for the shower and slathering themselves in body glitter and asking Michele for condoms, extra cash, a ride. And Chase is unemployed and trapped in the suite on the twenty-second floor of the Palace with a girl he just may be in love with even though there had always been a line between them. It was a line Chase drew for a reason. Two months ago, in the spring, crossing that line was unimaginable.
The Delivery Man is an exhilarating debut novel: a fast, frightening, and unflinching portrait of today's lost generation. It is a love story set against the surreal excess of Las Vegas--and the artificial suburbs, gated communities, and freeways that surround it--where broken lives come to seek new beginnings and casinos feed the lust of tourists and residents alike. Ultrasophisticated local kids grow up fast and burn out early.
After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service by his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation.
At once stark and electrically atmospheric, horrifying and hopeful, The Delivery Man offers both a visceral reading experience and a complex moral vision. It is a novel of our times that addresses the oldest questions we ask ourselves. Most of all, it is a shattering indictment of a society in which personal responsibility has been abandoned, lust is increasingly substituted for love, and innocence is an anachronism. It also marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in American fiction.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Very Raw-- good read though! |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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The cover of this book initially caught my eye, there was just something about it...
This book is very raw, raunchy, sexual, disturbing, and extremely engrossing. I couldn't put it down. The characters are all so unlikeable, it really is hard to pick who you're rooting for. Do I feel Chase got what he deserved in the end? Maybe...
Part of me feels bad for Chase, becuase he just can't quit Michelle. It's not that he likes the life he's leading and likes what he's doing, he hates it! He hates being this "delivery man" for Michelle/Bailey. I think the problem is, and this is where I feel sorry for him, is that he just can not leave Michele. She was really the only one that was there for him when Carly died, and has kind of taken her place. For that reason, he is just drawn to her. It's very ironic becuase one of the reason's he feels sorry for her, is part of the game they played years ago when he told her that no one cares about her. And it's true, with all of the other characters, except him. Chase is the ONLY character that actually cares about Michele.
It was a good read. I think the creepiest thing about this book, is that this stuff really goes on. This is a fictional book, but it's sad that it really is a reality.
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| No Character Development |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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This was probably one of the worst books I have ever read. I know that sounds harsh. There was no character development. You never really learned what made Chase and Michele tick. You read about their actions and their day-to-day, but never their motivations. I was waiting to hear something about the "why's" of their lives...never happened. The characters were so shallow, it would have been a much better read if we found out more about them as people rather than just following their failures and troubles. We knew what they aspired to be but we never got to bond with them as characters becasue they seemed to have very 'dead' emotions. Skip it.
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| The other side of Vegas |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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.A fascinating take on a side of Las Vegas few of us will experience on our next vacation. This book offers a great inside look at to hopelessness and destructiveness that can be found, in people in their teens and twenties. An even better book than this for showing another side of Las Vegas is Beautiful Children.
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| Fun Vegas Fiction |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I was looking for works of fiction set in Las Vegas and stumbled across this book. The comparisons to Ellis are valid, but it reminded me of an X-rated "Generation X." Good stuff.
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| "You are not loved by anyone." |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I flew through it in a few days. The story is a depressingly tragic one, with self-destructive characters that don't catch any breaks and seem to have no positive motivation to improve their bleak lives. None of the characters, even the main character Chase, is particularly likeable, but they are compelling nonetheless. McGinniss Jr. paints a vivid portrait of this slice of Vegas life, and uses flashbacks to delve deeper into the relationships between certain characters, and show why they can't seem to let go of each other no matter how much it may ruin their lives in the end. The story ends on an unfinished note, but it also gives a sense of everything going full circle. A self-destructive circle that none of these character can escape. It's definitely a story that will stick with you after you've finished it.
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