House of Anansi Press
Alligator
Written by Lisa Moore
Published September 13, 2005 |
ISBN 9780887848445
FICTION / Urban

About this book
Alligator
Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore's Alligator gives dramatic birth to a new kind of fiction: North Atlantic Gothic. The story moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in contemporary St. John's, Newfoundland-- a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O'Connor country. Its denizens jostle each other in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, lust, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption. Meet Madeleine, the driven aging filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies; Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers; Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters; and Colleen, at seventeen a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive. In these pages humanity is a bizarre combination of the reptilian and the saintly. Listen to its heartbeat, and be moved -- and delighted.
About the Author
Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore is the bestselling author of the novels February, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of CBC's Canada Reads competition, and Alligator, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Awards and Praise
- Long-listed Orange Broadband Award, 2007
- Short-listed Commonwealth Writers' Prize - Best Book, 2006
- Short-listed Bennington Gate Fiction Award, 2005
- Short-listed Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, 2006
- Long-listed IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2006
- Short-listed Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2005
- Winner ReLit Awards - Novel, 2006