A Lonely Man

A Novel

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Pub Date 04 May 2021 | Archive Date 04 May 2021

Description

"Elegant . . . A superb suspense novel, imbued with moral and narrative complexity and an omnipresent low cloud cover of dread.” —Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

Two British men meet by chance in Berlin. Robert is trying and failing to finish his next book while balancing his responsibilities as a husband and father. Patrick, a recent arrival in the city, is secretive about his past, but eventually reveals that he has been ghostwriting the autobiography of a Russian oligarch. The oligarch has turned up dead, and Patrick claims to be a hunted man himself.

Although Robert doubts the truth of Patrick’s story, it fascinates him, and he thinks it might hold the key to his own foundering novel. Working to gain the other man’s trust, Robert draws out the details of Patrick’s past while ensnaring himself ever more tightly in what might be either a fantasist’s creation or a lethal international plot.

Through an elegant existential game of cat and mouse, Chris Power’s A Lonely Man depicts an attempt to create art at the cost of empathy. Robert must decide what is his for the taking—and whether some stories are too dangerous to tell.

"Elegant . . . A superb suspense novel, imbued with moral and narrative complexity and an omnipresent low cloud cover of dread.” —Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

Two British men meet by chance...


Advance Praise

“An elegant, atmospheric story of shadows and half-truths . . . A Lonely Man soon reveals itself as a taut, subtle, postmodern literary thriller written with an exacting command over its form . . . The final 50 pages are so tense, I found myself both too stressed to go on and too stressed to stop, a total captive to the story.”

Johanna Thomas-Carr, The Sunday Times (UK)

"Power’s understated style abets the tension, creating gaps and unanswered questions that pull the reader along, recalling Hermione Lee’s description of Penelope Fitzgerald’s prose as 'plain, compact, and subtle' . . . An entertaining literary thriller that traces intrigue from the writer’s mind to the latest headlines."

Kirkus (starred review)

"In this beguiling literary thriller about the ethics of storytelling, Power (Mothers) examines the plundering tendencies of oligarchs and writers alike . . . Power maintains an elegant sense of intrigue around the lengths writers will go for a good story."

Publishers Weekly

"Well-constructed spy stories about lost and lonely men are a rarity these days.”

Daily Mail

"A Lonely Man left me unnerved and chilled. To read this book is to encounter a mysterious and shapeshifting stranger. Chris Power writes with masterful dexterity, and this novel reveals his genius for subtle misdirection and pulsing tension. A Lonely Man is a delicate snare of a novel, and by the time you realize that the characters are trapped in a lethal game, you are also trapped and powerless to resist its hold. I was breathless and nervous by the end of it. An alluring and seductive novel."

Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life

"A thrilling, unnerving novel following an international conspiracy and domestic solitude—A Lonely Man is one of those rare books that’s as entertaining as it is perceptive, a page-turner with exacting syntax and emotional heft."

Catherine Lacey, author of Pew

"Is it possible to spin a thriller, a real thriller, out of the deep and bitter mysteries at the heart of the creative process? With A Lonely Man, Chris Power shows us that it can be done, and done beautifully. This is a thinking person’s novel of suspense—and also one of the most vivid and unsparing accounts of the expatriate writer’s life that I’ve encountered. Mr. Power writes with genuine daring."

John Wray, author of Godsend

"I loved this taut, graceful literary thriller, in which domesticity is as riveting as the threat of criminal entanglement. In A Lonely Man, family life—and love—is the beating heart of the story, creating an absorbing, menacing interplay between home, ambition and (self-) deception."

Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy

"A Lonely Man is a remarkable debut; an accomplished and intricately plotted story that manages to be both thrilling and deeply considered. If you're a fan of existential crises, family dramas, Putin-era paranoias, and Bolaño-style multiplicities, and want to see them woven into one taut novel, you're in the right place. A lonely triumph."

Jon McGregor, author of The Reservoir Tapes

"A Lonely Man manages to set an unlikely premise alongside extraordinary events, while speaking honestly about the overwhelming, mundane things of fatherhood and being a friend and husband. A very deft literary act."

Cynan Jones, author of Stillicide

"A Lonely Man entrances with its ingenious structure, haunting mood of paranoia and intrigue, and games of literature and violence played out in a seductively rendered Berlin. I savored every page."

Rob Doyle, author of Threshold

"A portrait of a man and his dawning, imperfect realization that his connections with others have been facile, even superficial, A Lonely Man is an unsettling portrait of contemporary masculinity. The prose has a lambent, hovering quality and the sinewy, clearness of line of a Simenon roman dur—it’s a very English, European novel. Power leaves us with a burden of fear and irresolution, something that is in the best of Le Carré or Ambler."

David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On

“Such grand themes as wealth, power, greed and truth itself are explored in an impressively deft and discrete way. Here a bottle of beer or an illicit kiss feel as subtly significant as the death of an oligarch or a mysterious man on the run. A Lonely Man is a tense and taut work that’s utterly European, and all the better for it.”

Ben Myers, author of The Offing

“An elegant, atmospheric story of shadows and half-truths . . . A Lonely Man soon reveals itself as a taut, subtle, postmodern literary thriller written with an exacting command over its form...


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Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780374298449
PRICE $27.00 (USD)
PAGES 320

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)

Average rating from 20 members


Featured Reviews

A classic "writer novelizing a dangerous true tale" story, "A Lonely Man" follows Robert, a young writer in Berlin. Gestating not too much in the way of words, while with a wonderful wife and two daughters, he stumbles onto Patrick, a driven, perhaps shifty ghost writer who fears Putin's reach because of starting a book by one of those Russian oligarchs who could only have been born from as cataclysmic an event as the end of the Cold War. Is Patrick for real or just paranoid? Why does Robert latch onto Patrick's images and scenes so frantically? It can't turn out well. A Lonely Man begins as a cross between a modest expatriate tale and a thriller by Robert Harris (remember his The Ghost?) but darkens and deepens, the prose precise and immersive, into an existential drama that enthralls. Domesticity nestles with opulence, violence with tawdriness. Lit thriller par excellence.

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I've never had a problem with books-about-writers, books-about-writing, books-about-writers-traveling-through-Europe-reflecting-on-their-craft. There are a lot of them that I can think of that I really loved. But for me the start of this was really slow. I don't want to say it was boring but it also wasn't not boring. By the time it picks up though, it is so tense and so anxiety-inducing. So what started out not my favorite ended up being a *wildly* stressful book that I enjoyed a lot and that I think is going to linger in my brain.

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Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. Robert has written a book of short stories that got him recognition and a contract to write a novel. Now Robert has moved from London to Berlin with his wife and two young daughters and his novel is eighteen months past due. By chance Robert meets another writer from London named Patrick. Patrick ghostwrites books for public figures. He was working on a book for a Russian oligarch, but he died before the book was completed. Patrick now thinks that the people who killed the oligarch are going to kill him next. Robert is not sure how much of this is real and how much of this is paranoid fantasies, but he thinks maybe he can keep Patrick talking long enough to take this story and turn it into a novel. This is such a fun, twisting novel.

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Chris Power's A Lonely Man is a creative take on a thriller. With echos of Henry James and Patricia Highsmith, and even a little American Psycho in there, this novel blurs the line between a con and reality.

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