Ride Around Shining

A Novel

Fiction & Literature, Psychological, Literary
Cover of the book Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan, Harper
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Chris Leslie-Hynan ISBN: 9780062285102
Publisher: Harper Publication: August 5, 2014
Imprint: Harper Language: English
Author: Chris Leslie-Hynan
ISBN: 9780062285102
Publisher: Harper
Publication: August 5, 2014
Imprint: Harper
Language: English

Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

A provocative debut novel about a young white chauffeur and his wealthy black employer, an NBA player—a twenty-first century inversion of what we’ve come to expect stories of race and class to look like, and a discomfiting portrait of envy and obsession.

Ride Around Shining concerns the idle preoccupations, and later machinations, of a transplanted Portlander named Jess—a nobody from nowhere with a Master’s degree and a gig delivering takeout. He parlays the latter, along with a few lies, into a job as a chauffeur for an up-and-coming Trail Blazer named Calyph West and his young wife, Antonia.

Calyph is black and Antonia is white and Jess becomes fascinated, innocuously at first, by all they are that he is not. In striving to make himself indispensable to them, he causes Calyph to have a season-ending knee injury, then brings about the couple’s estrangement, before positioning himself at last as their perverse savior.

In the tradition of The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Great Gatsby, and Harold Pinter’s The Servant—not to mention a certain Shakespeare play about a creepy white dude obsessed with a black dude—Ride Around Shining tries to say the unsayable about white fixation on black culture, particularly black athletic culture, something so common in everyday life it has gone all but unaddressed.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

A provocative debut novel about a young white chauffeur and his wealthy black employer, an NBA player—a twenty-first century inversion of what we’ve come to expect stories of race and class to look like, and a discomfiting portrait of envy and obsession.

Ride Around Shining concerns the idle preoccupations, and later machinations, of a transplanted Portlander named Jess—a nobody from nowhere with a Master’s degree and a gig delivering takeout. He parlays the latter, along with a few lies, into a job as a chauffeur for an up-and-coming Trail Blazer named Calyph West and his young wife, Antonia.

Calyph is black and Antonia is white and Jess becomes fascinated, innocuously at first, by all they are that he is not. In striving to make himself indispensable to them, he causes Calyph to have a season-ending knee injury, then brings about the couple’s estrangement, before positioning himself at last as their perverse savior.

In the tradition of The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Great Gatsby, and Harold Pinter’s The Servant—not to mention a certain Shakespeare play about a creepy white dude obsessed with a black dude—Ride Around Shining tries to say the unsayable about white fixation on black culture, particularly black athletic culture, something so common in everyday life it has gone all but unaddressed.

More books from Harper

Cover of the book Geronimo by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book After the Fireworks by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Shadowkiller by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Last Goodnight by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Last to Know by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Queen of Blood by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Steal the Lightning by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Between Gods by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Clair de Lune by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Conscious by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Stolen Child by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Black Rood by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book The Portrait of Lady Wycliff by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Another Side of Paradise by Chris Leslie-Hynan
Cover of the book Gift of the Goddess by Chris Leslie-Hynan
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy