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Overview
From the highly acclaimed director of Midnight Express and The Commitments comes a sparkling story of a pickpocket's odyssey through America. During the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, seven-year-old Thomas Moran finds himself accidentally embarking on a career in pick-pocketing. In the following years he becomes a master of his dubious craft and grows to manhood traveling from state to state across America. His picaresque journey takes him through Prohibition and the Depression; into the desperate highs of the Hootchy-Kootchy and the dying vineyards of California, accompanied by an array of richly drawn characters frantically clutching at the crumbling American Dream. Italian and Chinese gangsters, con-artists, corrupt clergy, and speak-easy bootleggers all have a part to play in Tommy's destiny, but it is Effie, the great love of his life, who offers him the chance to change his future, and tries to save him from himself. Colorfully written, engaging and richly evocative of an extraordinary period in American history, The Sucker's Kiss marks the literary debut of a master storyteller.
Synopsis
Praise for The Sucker's Kiss
"Alan Parker is a master of historical perspective. In The Sucker's Kiss, he evokes early twentieth-century San Francisco with all the grit and ferment of a West Coast William Kennedy."
- T. C. Boyle
"Alan Parker has written an engaging, entertaining romp. . . . His rogue's story is funny, ebullient, and ultimately poignant."
- Kevin Baker, author of Paradise Alley
"Memo to Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild: Please go on strike more often. Why? Well, while you were picketing and protesting, a director and writer, Alan Parker, decided to write a hell of a novel, The Sucker's Kiss. You might expect Sir Alan to take as his territory England, particularly North London. He might have written of highwaymen and he chose instead the forty-eight states. There goes his picaresque hero, Thomas Moran, goaded into pickpocketing by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. After that the sky is the limit and two oceans his borders."
- Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes
"Triumphant . . . Parker has created a splendid character, an amiable, amoral rogue whom the reader cannot help rooting for."
- Daily Mail (U.K.)
"A gripping, entertaining, and finely wrought story to match the best of his films."
- The Independent on Sunday (U.K.)
"A thrilling and enjoyable read, filmic and brilliantly paced. As you might expect, Parker is a gifted storyteller."
- Scotland on Sunday (U.K.)
"A vivid, colorful, fast-paced, literary, and cinematic work, full of strong characterizations and wonderfully textured prose."
- Nottingham Evening Post (U.K.)
Kirkus Reviews
During the first two decades of the 20th century, a young pickpocket sets out across America on a journey that doesn't take the reader very far. In his first fiction, British director Parker (the films Midnight Express and The Commitments) follows Thomas Moran, a wily, ingratiating lad from San Francisco whose earthy observations sometimes amuse but too often suggest late-night college bull sessions. Twice in the first chapter, Moran observes that "nothing's free in America"-how true, how true. An obstreperous youth, Moran flees a Catholic correctional home, leaving his mother and two sisters behind as he becomes a vagabond pickpocket-and why not? As Moran says, "The mudsnoots on Wall Street, like me, had their hands in everyone's pockets." The first half of Parker's smoothly written, lightly amusing narrative offers some effective, picaresque moments, as when the crowd at a circus lynches the elephant that trampled a spectator. But less than trenchant are other episodes, prefaced in the style of Dos Passos with brief accounts of national events linked superficially to what follows. From a report detailing the successful integration of escaped mental patients into society, Moran concludes, "Who's to know who's crazy?" The second half is rather uninspired in plot, and in form seems awkwardly joined to the episodic first half. Moran returns to California and enters in a romantic relationship with Effie, a grape grower's daughter. As Prohibition hurts profits, since demand for grapes is low, Moran tries to help the vineyard owner. The effort entangles Moran with the Italian mob, the Chinese mob, and the Catholic Church mob. Dealing with the latter, Moran confronts something he-and thereader-suspected all along about Effie. More disillusioned than ever, a melancholy Moran heads back on the road. As journey novels go, this one is pretty much a Cook's tour of early-20th-century America.