Retrato do autor

David Coventry

Autor(a) de The Invisible Mile: A Novel

2+ Works 58 Membros 3 Críticas

About the Author

David Coventry was born in 1969 in Wellington, New Zealand. He has an Honours degree in English from Victoria University, a BA in Literature and Religion. In 2010 he received a Masters in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria. He has published fiction in mostrar mais Sport, The Dominion Post and Turbine. The Invisible Mile is his first book. In 2016 The Invisible Mile won a New Zealand Award in the fiction category. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Obras por David Coventry

The Invisible Mile: A Novel (2015) 56 exemplares
Dance Prone (2020) 2 exemplares

Associated Works

National Geographic Magazine 2016 v230 #3 September (2016) — Fotógrafo — 13 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
New Zealand

Membros

Críticas

I did not enjoy this book. The style was very "psychological," as another reader has described it. I found it annoying and it didn't help me to get into the story. There were some very long sentences.

The book was less about cycling and more about a fictional rider trying to come to terms with himself and his family's history. There was a lot of showing and not telling, which can be good, but sometimes I was confused. I was also taken aback by a very nasty description of a war crime that one of the characters suddenly described. I wouldn't recommend this one.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
KWharton | 1 outra crítica | Nov 29, 2022 |
The blurb puts it best - "DANCE PRONE is a novel of music, ritual and love. It is live, tense and corporeal." For many who were around in the mid 1980's, immersed in the counter culture of hard-core post-punk, indie rock with its wildness and weirdness, there are going to be bells ringing, and maybe some uncomfortable recognition. It's ultimately a novel about trauma, delivered in a series of brutal, almost dance like moves, with events blurring, just as they would have for central character Conrad - who spends a lot of time drunk, drugged, struggling.

With half the story being about events in the 80's, the sexual assault and wounding by gunshot of two members of the band intertwined with current day 2019, focusing in the later timeline on repercussions, mostly done by way of reflection and consideration.

It's written in a fluid, rolling, rhythmic yet frequently discordant sort of a manner, reflecting that drunk, drugged viewpoint of, at the very least, Conrad. Protagonist, band member, victim who is pretty well out of it for the entire time that the band is touring, working the far edges of the music industry, reflecting the style of music in a lifestyle of risk, and little financial reward. Veering into poetic, almost stream of conscious style, it's hard not to feel some hat tips going on here to writers like Cormac McCathy and Jack Kerouac.

Having said that is, this didn't quite read like ON THE ROAD for more recent generations, and that might say a lot more about the age / reflections of this reader than it does about the book itself. The characters are complicated, multi-dimensional beings in a furry, fuzzy world. The act of reflection is sometimes illuminating, and at other times self-indulgent to the point of teeth endangering. There is obviously an attempt here to get inside musical thinking - and there's definitely something there in the fluidity of the style, and those rapid switches from musicality to discordance that felt like it was reflecting something about the indie rock scene. Or at least I think that's what's going on - whatever it is, is somewhere a little outside my descriptive ability.

There were times that I really loved DANCE PRONE and really thought I knew what was going on, was inside it's world, and then there were times, perhaps a little too reminiscent of too many 80's parties, where I felt like a complete outsider, no idea what everyone was talking about, missed which boat it was that we were all supposed to be disdainfully rejecting.

Definitely going to be a book that divides opinion, and it may even be one of those books that sits neatly in the generation divide or specifically within your own particular set of interests. Having said that, there are glimpses into the impacts of violence and abuse that were very moving. Perhaps it's a book for readers who are looking for something profoundly different.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/dance-prone-david-coventry
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
austcrimefiction | Nov 23, 2021 |
I did not enjoy this book. The style was very "psychological," as another reader has described it. I found it annoying and it didn't help me to get into the story. There were some very long sentences.

The book was less about cycling and more about a fictional rider trying to come to terms with himself and his family's history. There was a lot of showing and not telling, which can be good, but sometimes I was confused. I was also taken aback by a very nasty description of a war crime that one of the characters suddenly described. I wouldn't recommend this one.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
KWharton | 1 outra crítica | Sep 3, 2020 |

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Associated Authors

Estatísticas

Obras
2
Also by
1
Membros
58
Popularidade
#284,346
Avaliação
3.2
Críticas
3
ISBN
21
Línguas
3

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