Jernigan

Jernigan Synopsis

Peter Jernigan's life is slipping out of control. His wife's gone, he's lost his job and he's a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn't work, you up the dose. And when that doesn't work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?) Jernigan's answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he's busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan's perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.

Jernigan Press Reviews

'David Gates makes me sick with envy' -- Nick Hornby

'A sizzler of a novel, a whirlwind. It swept me up in the opening paragraphs ... I found myself wishing I could read fast enough to swallow it whole in a single sitting' -- Joseph Heller

'A bravura performance, sprawling and energetic, soused and noisy, with a bitter comic edge ... a rambunctious and enthralling portrait of a man who, by looking too closely, has finally lost sight of himself' Guardian

'A relentless, combustible mix of high literary art and low humour, wisecracking profanity and shellac dark glimpses into a man's wilful self-annihilation ... if there is one book that deserves to come in from the cold in the way Revolutionary Road, Alone in Berlin and Stoner have, it's David Gates's Jernigan.' -- Stuart Evers

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All versions of this book

ISBN: 9781781254905
Publication date: 06/08/2015
Publisher: Serpent's Tail an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
Format: Paperback

Book Information

About David Gates, Stuart Evers

David Gates lives in Missoula, Montana, and Granville, New York. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Bennington Writing Seminars, and was an editor at Newsweek, where he specialised in music and books. He is the author of two novels, Jernigan and Preston Falls, and the story collection The Wonders of the Invisible World. Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. Gates's short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Paris Review and Granta.