Books with category Gritty Realism
Displaying 4 books

The Furies: Women, Vengeance, And Justice

2024

by Elizabeth Flock

Renowned journalist and author Elizabeth Flock delves into a topic that many shy away from, challenging our notions about the role and necessity of female-led violence in opposing systems that are fundamentally against women. The Furies: Women, Vengeance, And Justice is a profound inquiry into the lives of three women who, facing failure from the very institutions designed to safeguard them—government, police, courts—resorted to violence to reclaim power, safety, and freedom.

The book presents immersive narratives of Brittany Smith, a young woman from Stevenson, Alabama, who, after claiming to have killed a man in self-defense against rape, was denied protection by the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, who leads a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a member of an all-female militia that confronted ISIS in Syria.

Through Flock's compelling prose and extensive on-the-ground research, this work explores the nuances of whether women's safety can ever be fully ensured without the use of force. It asks hard-hitting questions about the effectiveness of vengeance, the potential for creating lasting change within misogynistic and paternalistic systems, and the vision of societies where women wield real power.

The Furies ignites a conversation about gender equality, power dynamics, and the celebrated yet complex legacy of women who fight back.

Women

Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.

With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.

A Million Little Pieces

2003

by James Frey

A Million Little Pieces is a gripping memoir about the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery from a bold and talented literary voice. "Anyone who has ever felt broken and wished for a better life will find inspiration in Frey’s story." —People

By the time he entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility, James Frey had taken his addictions to near-deadly extremes. He had so thoroughly ravaged his body that the facility’s doctors were shocked he was still alive. The ensuing torments of detoxification and withdrawal, and the never-ending urge to use chemicals, are captured with a vitality and directness that recalls the seminal eye-opening power of William Burroughs’s Junky. But A Million Little Pieces refuses to fit any mold of drug literature.

Inside the clinic, James is surrounded by patients as troubled as he is—including a judge, a mobster, a one-time world-champion boxer, and a fragile former prostitute to whom he is not allowed to speak—but their friendship and advice strikes James as stronger and truer than the clinic’s droning dogma of How to Recover. James refuses to consider himself a victim of anything but his own bad decisions, and insists on accepting sole accountability for the person he has been and the person he may become—which runs directly counter to his counselors' recipes for recovery.

James has to fight to find his own way to confront the consequences of the life he has lived so far, and to determine what future, if any, he holds. It is this fight, told with the charismatic energy and power of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, that is at the heart of A Million Little Pieces: the fight between one young man’s will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart.

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.

Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations.

Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.

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