Troublemaker
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Earl, a 20-something Southern kid, is adrift in life. After his father's death, his mother - who can no longer deal with him - sends him to live with his grandmother in Memphis. His grandmother, getting senile and paranoid, turns him out on the streets of Memphis and from there his path leads him to New York City. In New York, Earl works as a hustler, then as a kept boy, but ultimately fails at both. Addicted and lost, he ends up on a train back to Omaha, where his mother keeps her door closed against him. With nowhere else to go, Earl ends up walking the grounds of a local carnival where he meets Red, an enigmatic 20-something man to whom Earl tries to attach himself, only to have Red slip away. Now the obsession with Red is the only thing driving him and Earl takes off to find this man whom he barely knows.
As the narrative moves backward and forward in time, Troublemaker slowly reveals the truth about Earl, his past, his family, and his driving obsession with Red. Moving, compelling, and darkly funny, Troublemaker is about dislocation, obsession, and the search for affection. Pera's debut is a tour-de-force of voice and structure, marking the emergence of a major young writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Take a 22-year-old boy with an Ozark background and let him hustle his body on the streets of New York City, all the while high on junk and liquor, and what do you get? Trouble, as Pera demonstrates in his debut novel. Kicked around from Omaha to Memphis to rural Arkansas as a child, narrator Earl finally ends up on a bus for New York. Casting around for work on the mean streets, Earl happens upon Madam, who owns a male brothel. Earl has learned to turn tricks in Memphis, and how to take drugs. In New York, he becomes a full-fledged junkie, ripping off Madam and hopping from one dubious sugar daddy to the next. After a string of affairs, Earl beating up a Wall Street businessman named Walrus, presumably killing him. In a highly strung-out condition, he goes back to Madam, who buys him a ticket home. But where is home? When Earl reaches Omaha, his mother won't let him in. Then he meets a pugnacious but physically appealing young man named Red at a carnival. After Red leaves town suddenly, Earl tracks him to Colorado Springs. Red has dyed his hair and calls himself Robert now. But Red is less than thrilled about a reunion with Earl; it turns out he's with a gang of "hawks," who recruit orphan boys from the heartlands for nefarious big-city business. Earl's Li'l Abner dialect, all "I's" and "you's," grows tedious, but Pera's elaborate, circuitous narrative is rich in nuance. By releasing information in the story in accordance with the way Earl remembers it, Pera plunges us into the uprooted desperation of Earl's consciousness, with its sad refrain: "What to do, what to do, now I run out of places."
