Man Gone Down

On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator of Man Gone Down finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep the kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them in which to live. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we learn of a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Published: 01/01/2007
ISBN: 9780802170293
Pages: 431
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.20d
Award: International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - Winner

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2006 pg. 928
Publishers Weekly 10/09/2006 pg. 34
Library Journal 10/15/2006 pg. 56
Library Journal 11/01/2006 pg. 92
Booklist 11/15/2006 pg. 30
New York Times 02/04/2007 pg. 1
People Weekly 03/05/2007 pg. 50
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/02/2007 pg. 12