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    Checker and the Derailleurs
    Unavailable
    Checker and the Derailleurs
    Unavailable
    Checker and the Derailleurs
    Audiobook11 hours

    Checker and the Derailleurs

    Written by Lionel Shriver

    Narrated by Christopher Ragland

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    From the Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a novel about what it takes to make it in music. How charisma is worth its weight in gold. And how jealously can grow until it has eaten away at a musician’s heart.

    He has that thing that they’d all pay for but can’t buy: on stage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker’s Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood’s affections.

    An examination of the passion, the jealousy and the friendship of young musicians trying to break out, Checker and The Derailleurs is also about cycling, rock lyrics, glass blowing, the marriage of convenience, and—most of all—the mystery of joy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 6, 2017
    ISBN9780008223199
    Unavailable
    Checker and the Derailleurs
    Author

    Lionel Shriver

    Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Checker and the Derailleurs

    4.5/5

    12 ratings1 review

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    • 5/5
      For a long time, Checker and the Derailleurs had mostly a cult following. Published in 1989, it went out of print until reissued in 2009. Now that Lionel Shriver's books are going to gain new audiences due to the buzz around the film version of We Need to Talk About Kevin, someone will probably try to make a movie of Checker as well.

      I hope not. While it seems eminently filmable and the richly colored and textured images Shriver paints could be magic in the hands of a visual director like Terrence Malick or Tom Ford, it would be a shame to ruin a character like Checker Secretti.

      Checker, who reminded me of a latter-day Phineas (from John Knowles's 1953 A Separate Peace), is like a personal gift from the author because we need so much to bring him to life inside our own heads. I very much want to hang with Checker, but the Checker of my imagination, not of some casting agent's.

      Some folks read this book over and over, and I can see why. It's the only way we can keep knowing Checker and his friends over a lifetime.