Skels

By Maggie J. Dubris
(Soft Skull Press, Paperback, 9781932360257, 238pp.)

Publication Date: May 2004

Categories: Literary

Buy online from an indie bookstore
Find an indie bookstore near you

Link to this Book


Description
Lyrical, violent, and surprisingly passionate, Skels is an inventive yet realistic portrait of the urban underworld from a paramedic's point of view. The story is based on an unusual idea: What would happen if the ambulance world was permeated with the works of past authors, and the homeless patients (the "skels") carried the consciousness of the writers? What would a paramedic do if she met a great poet, dirty and covered with lice, and was granted the chance to save him - not from dying but from his own life? A funny, gritty urban thriller, Skels pits corrupt cops, bumbling firemen, drunken softball tournaments, and careening transvestites against this surreal literary environment, realistically portraying a New York City of 1979 rich with an ancient truth that is all but invisible from the outside. The characters within it must face brutality and illness, vengeance and despair, and find help in tenderness and the threads that connect them to the past.
Indie Bookstore Finder

Indie Bestsellers

The Tyranny of E-mail
John Freeman
Scribner
Ordinary Thunderstorms
William Boyd
HarperCollins
The Girl with Glass Feet
Ali Shaw
Henry Holt and Co.
The Book of Fires
Jane Borodale
Viking

Make Your Own Wishlist