Mackerel Sky
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A novel of criminal intrigue, eccentric love and the power of women.
After a twenty-year absence, Guy Vidoq is returning home to meet his daughter for the first time. He discovers his mercurial daughter, Isabelle, has been raised in a bizzarre, cloistered environment by her libertine mother, Martine, who is now living with a young man, Harry, roughly the age of their daughter. If the intense, closed and sensual relationship of these three housemates wasn't bad enough, Guy soon discovers that the entire household is deeply enmeshed in a counterfeiting operation that produces fake American currency for the black market.
Extraordinarily intelligent, though volatile, Martine soon becomes the obsession of Guy, turning his world upside down. As they begin to rekindle their relationship, tension in the house rises. And when the counterfeiting operation begins to break down, everyone finds themselves in desperate situations as they are each drawn closer to the criminal underworld.
Compared to Milan Kundera, Leonard Cohen and Barbara Gowdy, Natalee Caple constructs an exquisite portrayal of the human psyche with a daring, provocative style. Reminiscent of crime films from the French New Wave, Mackerel Sky is a dark, thrilling novel about seduction, the intricate, often destructive relationship between parent and child, and the impulses of the heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poor Guy Vidoq: he has no idea what he's in for when he returns to Canada after 20 years. He wants to meet his daughter, Isabelle, and see his old love, Martine, whom he left after he impregnated her (he was 16, she 25) but this is no ordinary reunion. Martine is a counterfeiter with a wild sex drive and a suicidal streak who's going to get Guy into all kinds of trouble, much of it with his pants down. Isabelle is a difficult beauty, and Harry, Martine's younger lover, would sooner spit on Guy than look at him. Sex, violence and poetic imagery make intriguing bedfellows in Canadian writer Caple's (The Plight of Happy People) American debut. Martine's and Guy's fathers were smugglers together, and while Guy lived cleanly in Boston, he's back in the game soon enough. Caple crafts an inventive, sometimes frustrating novel, part bizarre domestic drama and part crime thriller, as Guy tries to navigate the world he's stuck in (thanks to injuries suffered after having sex in a tree with Martine). Interesting secondary characters include the fastidious gay assassins, Jules and Jim, who are in on the operation. Caple is also a poet, and her language both sings and suffers for it (" 'Your heart sounds like my mother chopping radishes' " being an example of the latter); this is an unusual novel of intrigue indeed.
