Lightning People - Bollen, Christopher

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Résumé :
Originally published in hardcover in 2011.

Biographie:
Madi, a young entrepreneur who will have to face the moral complications of a business made successful by the outsourcing of American jobs to India...

Sommaire:
Capturing the atmosphere of anxiety and loss that exists in Manhattan, this is a story of the city itself, and the interconnected lives of those attempting to navigate both Manhattan and their own mortality.

Joseph Guiteau is a working actor who moved to New York to escape a tragic family history in the Midwest. Wandering through a city transformed by the attacks of September 2001, he frequents gatherings of conspiracy groups, trying to make sense of world events and his own personal history. Looming over his life is a secret that threatens to undermine his new marriage to Del, a snake expert at a city park, whose work visa is the only thread keeping her from deportation back to her native Greece.

The new marriage influences the lives of those around them: William, a dark and troubled actor whose sanity is fading as quickly as his career, leading him to perform increasingly desperate acts...

Praise for Lightning People The fanciful premise behind the title of Bollen's novel is that, after New York loses the lightning conductors of the Twin Towers, more and more residents die in lightning strikes. But the title also evokes the random nature of post-millennial city life, in which disaster or good fortune can strike at any time. An actor, supported by money from reruns of old commercials, pursues a sinister hobby--frequenting conspiracy-theory chat rooms and meetings. His wife doesn't know about her husband's fixation, distracted by her depressing job at the Bronx Zoo and her dysfunctional friends. Bollen excels at creating an atmosphere of Manhattan-specific dread, and certain scenes, particularly the account of a struggling actor's going-away party, are tragicomic masterpieces. --The New Yorker Ambitious . . . a nervy debut illuminated by flashes of insight. --The Wall Street Journal Heightened, poignant, and mysterious...Bollen's atmospheric