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Caught
by Lisa Moore

Published: 2014-02-04
Hardcover : 336 pages
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?Outsanding . . . Surprising and superb . . . A literary adventure story . . . Gripping, detailed, and wholly convincing . . . A supremely human book . . . combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.”?National Post

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?Outsanding . . . Surprising and superb . . . A literary adventure story . . . Gripping, detailed, and wholly convincing . . . A supremely human book . . . combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.”?National Post

"In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth. Caught is a propulsive and harrowing read."?Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers


Lisa Moore, ?Canada Reads” latest winner and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year author, is known for subtly crafted narratives that are at once sharp and impressionistic. Through an acute ear for dialogue and pared down prose, Moore's characters are startlingly present and instantly persuasive. In her new novel, Caught, Moore’s dangerously appealing new protagonist is unlike any she's imagined before: a modern Billy the Kid, a swaggering folk-hero-in-the making who busts out of prison to embark on one last great heist and win back the woman he loves.

Caught begins with a prison break. Twenty-five-year-old David Slaney, locked up on charges of marijuana possession, has escaped his cell and sprinted to the highway. There, he is picked up by a friend of his sister’s and transported to a strip bar where he survives his first night on the run. But evading the cops isn’t his only objective; Slaney intends to track down his old partner, Hearn, and get back into the drug business. Along the way, Slaney’s fugitive journey across Canada rushes vibrantly to life as he visits an old flame and adopts numerous guises to outpace authorities: hitchhiker, houseguest, student, lover. When finally he reunites with Hearn just steps ahead of a detective hell-bent on making a high-profile arrest, their scheme sends Slaney to Mexico, Colombia, and back again on an epic quest fueled by luck, charm, and unbending conviction.

Moore's most plot-driven novel to date, Caught is a thrillingly charged escapade that thrums with energy and suspense and deftly captures a moment in the late 1970s before the almost folkloric glamour surrounding pot smuggling turned violent. Ripe with bravado, love, ambition, and folly, Caught is about trust and deceit, about the risks we take for the lives we want and the mistakes we can’t outrun.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014: At the risk of annoying those who hate literary mashups, Iâ??m declaring Caught to be â??Huck Finn meets Les Miserables.â?? As those are two of my formative reading experiences, thatâ??s no small statement. And this is no small book. On page one, the likeably misguided Daniel Slaney has just escaped a Canadian prison, where heâ??d been held on pot-running charges. Through the story of Slaneyâ??s struggle to remain free, we soon learn that heâ??s already, in many ways, caught. Caught in a manipulative relationship with his childhood friend Hearn; caught in his doomed love for the women he left behind, and the child whoâ??s not his. Other characters are similarly caged by circumstance, particularly the wounded, dogged detective Patterson, who pursues Slaney across Canada, to Columbia and Mexico, all the while admiring, even envying Slaneyâ??s bravado attempt at freedom. They know each other, the hunter and his prey. Theyâ??re both caught in the lives theyâ??ve chosen. Toward the end of this subtly brilliant and propulsive novel, Slaney is asked whether itâ??s best to just do the things heâ??s blamed for. Slaneyâ??s reply: â??I did them from the start.â?? Thereâ??s so much energy, wit, smarts and heart in Mooreâ??s writing, though nothing feels forced or contrived. I enjoyed so many small, crystalline moments--sometimes tense, sometimes heart-rending--that made me sit back and think, â??Wow.â?? (Flipping through my review copy, I see â??Nice!â?? scribbled in the margins a dozen times.) Already an award-winner in Canada, Caught is captivating. --Neal Thompson

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