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A Lonely Note
Kevin Stevens
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Description for A Lonely Note
Paperback. Tariq is beset by conflict on the streets and at home. Music is his only consolation. When he forms a new friendship with a volatile record-store owner, Tariq discovers the world of jazz and the man he could become. Young adult thriller and literary fiction - this is a supreme story of a young Muslim man caught between two worlds. Num Pages: 256 pages. BIC Classification: YFB; YXC; YXF; YXZR. Category: (Y) Teenage / Young Adult. Dimension: 130 x 198 x 23. Weight in Grams: 244.
An black Iraq war veteran and an Iraqi-American Muslim teenager form an unlikely friendship through their shared love of John Coltrane. A supreme coming-of-age story of friendship, forgiveness - and jazz. Tariq is is a young Iraqi-American Muslim man, beset by danger on the streets and conflict at home. Music is his only consolation. When he forms a friendship with the volatile but intriguing record-store owner and Iraq war veteran, Jamal, Tariq discovers the world of jazz - and the man he could become. Jamal is exciting, eloquent, and troubled. He suffers from PTSD, is always on edge. Tariq wants to learn from Jamal's knowledge of music, but can he afford to get close too to this volatile veteran? When violence that has long threatened finally erupts, things suddenly clarify for Tariq. He takes the ultimate risk - not on behalf of his friend but his enemy - and the disparate worlds of modern America and traditional Islam come together in an unexpected and gripping resolution.
Product Details
Publisher
Little Island Books
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Weight
244g
Number of Pages
256
Place of Publication
Dublin, Ireland
ISBN
9781910411346
SKU
V9781910411346
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-2
About Kevin Stevens
Kevin Stevens the author of several adult novels and one YA novel. His first book for young children, The Powers, was chosen for the Dublin UNESCO Citywide Read and was hugely successful. Kevin also contributes regularly to The Irish Times and Dublin Review of Books.
Reviews for A Lonely Note
The descriptions of teenage uncertainty, the violent swings between passion and indifference, really stand out because of how spot-on Stevens gets them ... What Stevens excels in are the descriptions of Tariq's adolescent disquietude. And how universal a feeling is that? Not only is this a teenage circumstance but one that anyone who has gone through a crisis in any stage of life is sure to recognise, relate to and appreciate reading about when it's written this well.
Irish Independent
Whether the Muslim community can ever be fully accepted into American society is a question tacitly posed by Kevin Stevens in his engaging new novel A Lonely Note ... With its focus on a young Muslim simultaneously alienated from and mesmerised by American life, Stevens's novel has similarities with Terrorist, John Updike's penultimate novel published in 2006. The comparison is facilitated by Stevens's sharing with Updike a preoccupation with how the senses are continually quickened by the richness of the world: whether it's the colour wheel of the seasons, the sound of jazz or a whip-poor-will, or even the guilty pleasure of a candy bar consumed during religious fasting.
Dublin Review of Books
I loved this book. Its tender, intelligent interrogation of male adolescent desperation is unflinching, as is its take on other big subjects: school bullying, what it's like to be the only son of Iraqi Muslim migrants living and working in the US, religion, post-traumatic stress disorder, the contested limits of parental control (made all the more fractious by refugee fear - what will the neighbours say? amplified by a thousand), traditional Iraqi music, traditional Iraqi food (oh my, does it sound delicious), jazz and sex, with the sex - praise the Lord - so delicately portrayed that the young people retain their dignity. The story belts along with a smashing hostage-taking ending, with Tariq wondering why, like so many American scenes, it felt scripted. The author is an American who was educated here and now lives partly here and partly in Boston. This is his seventh novel. Hats off to the publisher, Little Island, for a handsomely produced tale about the difficulties and dangers of modern life. More, please.
The Irish Times
Irish Independent
Whether the Muslim community can ever be fully accepted into American society is a question tacitly posed by Kevin Stevens in his engaging new novel A Lonely Note ... With its focus on a young Muslim simultaneously alienated from and mesmerised by American life, Stevens's novel has similarities with Terrorist, John Updike's penultimate novel published in 2006. The comparison is facilitated by Stevens's sharing with Updike a preoccupation with how the senses are continually quickened by the richness of the world: whether it's the colour wheel of the seasons, the sound of jazz or a whip-poor-will, or even the guilty pleasure of a candy bar consumed during religious fasting.
Dublin Review of Books
I loved this book. Its tender, intelligent interrogation of male adolescent desperation is unflinching, as is its take on other big subjects: school bullying, what it's like to be the only son of Iraqi Muslim migrants living and working in the US, religion, post-traumatic stress disorder, the contested limits of parental control (made all the more fractious by refugee fear - what will the neighbours say? amplified by a thousand), traditional Iraqi music, traditional Iraqi food (oh my, does it sound delicious), jazz and sex, with the sex - praise the Lord - so delicately portrayed that the young people retain their dignity. The story belts along with a smashing hostage-taking ending, with Tariq wondering why, like so many American scenes, it felt scripted. The author is an American who was educated here and now lives partly here and partly in Boston. This is his seventh novel. Hats off to the publisher, Little Island, for a handsomely produced tale about the difficulties and dangers of modern life. More, please.
The Irish Times