Vernon Subutex 2 - by Virginie Despentes (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"Originally published in French in 2015 by âEditions Grasset & Fasquelle, France. English translation originally published in 2018 by MacLehose Press, Great Britain"--Title page verso.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><b>Part social epic, part punk-rock thriller, writer/filmmaker Virginie Despentes's <i>Vernon Subutex</i> trilogy continues the Man Booker International Prize shortlisted sprawling tale of an ex-record shop clerk's celebrity fortunes and misfortunes. </b> <p/>Rock star Alex Bleach might be dead, but he has a secret. It's a secret that concerns several people, but the only person who can unlock it is Vernon Subutex, former record shop proprietor turned homeless messiah and guru, last seen hallucinating and feverish on a bench. He has tapes of Alex that will shake the world. The hunt is on, and the wolves are closing in. <p/>Meanwhile, the cast of lovers and killers in Vernon's orbit is in violent disarray. Aïcha wants to know the truth behind the death of her mother, the porn star Vodka Satana. And if she finds the bastards responsible, she wants to make them pay, whatever Céleste thinks of her plan. Céleste wants Aïcha to get a grip and stop hanging around with Subutex's gang of disciples. The Hyena wants to find the Bleach tapes. She wants to untangle her complicated feelings about Anaïs, her boss's assistant. And speaking of her boss, she does not want Laurent Dopalet to discover how badly she has double-crossed him. <p/>Big-shot producer Laurent Dopalet wants the Hyena to find and destroy the Bleach tapes. He wants to forget he ever knew Vodka Satana. He wants people to stop graffitiing his apartment with ludicrous allegations. Above all, he wants people to understand: NONE OF THIS IS HIS FAULT. <p/><b>Virginie Despentes's <i>Vernon Subutex</i> trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read . . . [It] has dupes and assholes and racists and the people they hate and a stunning diversity of internal monologues and trans true love. Like the last decade, it searches for a happy ending that isn't merely personal and can't find it . . . These novels with their depth and detail kick TV's sorry ass. --Nell Zink, <i>Bustle</i>, The Best Books Of The 2010s </b></p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>It's bastards across the board in Virginie Despentes's brilliantly unshackled trilogy "Vernon Subutex", whose second volume is now available in Frank Wynne's eruptive translation from the French . . . What keeps you reading is the voice--acerbic, unconstrained, bitterly funny and, despite the book's intimations of enlightenment, perpetually pissed off. Ms. Despentes has a deep and abiding rage against conformity--against "the standardization of desire"--that only a renunciation as thoroughgoing as Vernon's seems capable of overcoming.<br><b>--Sam Sacks, <i>The Wall Street Journal</i></b> <p/>Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk rock George Eliot with a keen taste for the pitiable innards of her characters: no one else has her slyly penetrating eye, her spiky sense of humor, her razor wit that cuts like wire through the accumulated crud of our age's default thought patterns. In her masterful hands, <i>Vernon Subutex</i> becomes a droll, hilarious, insightful record of our unfortunate times.<br><b>--Alexandra Kleeman, author of <i>You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine</i><br></b><br>Cool, plentiful, and absolute genius. Virginie Despentes has a license to <i>ill</i>. <i>Vernon Subutex</i> is one of the best books of this decade.<br><b>--Alex Gilvarry, author of<i> Eastman Was Here</i><br></b><br><i></i>The apparent deaths by drug overdose of indie rock star Alex Bleach and his porn star ex-girlfriend unite a motley crew of armchair investigators in this rollicking second volume of a trilogy set in 2014 Paris . . . Such is the snowballing effect of this sexed-up epic, an achievement greater than the sum of its wildly colorful parts.<br><b>--<i>Publisher's Weekly </i>(starred)</b> <p/>The second book in her trilogy <i>Vernon Subutex</i>, Despentes' novel brings a jaundiced eye to pornography, drug addiction, and punk rock in the noirish titular story of record shop owner and eventual homeless messiah guru who has tapes concerning the dead rock star Alex Bleach. Like William S. Burroughs updated for the age of WhatsApp, Vernon Subutex 2 straps our current world to a chair and interrogates the hell out of it.<br><b>--<i>The Millions</i></b></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p><b>Virginie Despentes</b> is a writer and filmmaker. She worked in an independent record store in the early '90s, was a sex worker, and published her first novel, <i>Baise Moi</i>, when she was twenty-three. She adapted the novel for the screen in 2000, codirecting with the porn star Coralie Trinh Thi. Upon release, it became the first film to be banned in France in twenty-eight years. Despentes is the author of more than fifteen other works, including <i>Apocalypse Baby</i>, <i>Bye Bye Blondie</i>, <i>Pretty Things</i>, and the essay collection <i>King Kong Theory</i>. <p/><b>Frank Wynne</b> has translated the work of many authors including Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, Frédéric Beigbeder, and the late Ivoirian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. He won the International IMPAC Literary Award with Houellebecq for <i>The Elementary Particles</i>.</p>
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