Now It's Time To Say Goodbye - Softcover

Dale Peck

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099275724 ISBN 13: 9780099275725

Publisher: Vintage, 1999

Synopsis

With his third novel, published to overwhelming critical acclaim, Dale Peck delivers a gothic horror story of epic proportions.In the flatlands of Kansas, a small town called Kenosha burned to the ground; in its stead two new towns were created on nearby land -- the all-white Galatea and the black Galatia. To this divided community come two disillusioned New Yorkers, Colin and his young lover Justin Time. Their arrival triggers a brutal string of events, all linked to secrets of long ago, including the uncertain circumstances surrounding the lynching of an albino black boy. With the sexual assault and kidnapping of a town cheerleader, Colin and Justin find themselves both victims and suspects, protagonists and scapegoats. And as they discover the inner demons of a town reborn from the ashes, they must ultimately embrace their own dark truths.

Provocative, ambitious, satisfyingly complex -- in every sense, a major achievement from one of our most accomplished writers, a novelist of the first order.

About this title

Review:

The setting for Dale Peck's third novel is not one but two small, dying towns: Galatea, settled by the white citizens of Kenosha after a firestorm of biblical proportions destroyed their town, and Galatia, founded by black pioneers more than 100 years before. Galatea may have effectively erased the older town in the eyes of the world, but it did not remove it, and Galatia lives on as a kind of shadowy palimpsest. To this dusty corner of the prairie come two outsiders, Justin Time and his lover Colin Nieman. Fleeing from New York, where AIDS has killed the magic number of 500 of their friends, the two settle in Galatea for reasons that are not immediately apparent--though one Galatean lists five possible ones: "A-I-D-S were the first four and the fifth was: it ain't round here." Colin is a successful novelist with several books to his credit and enough money to buy the county's grandest house; Justin has nothing, not even his own name--that "bad joke," says Colin, "that refused to go away."

Soon the pair are drawn into the legacy of Galatea's hate-filled racial past. Years ago, a black albino boy named Eric Johnson was lynched for supposedly molesting a little white girl; later, the same little girl, grown up into Galatea's homecoming queen, is raped, mutilated, and abducted while Justin looks on. Now It's Time To Say Goodbye is very different from the narrative experimentation of Peck's first two novels, Martin and John and The Law of Enclosures. Still, certain names--Susan, Martin, John, Bea--and vague corresponding character similarities recur in all three, to disorienting effect. Also like its predecessors, this is a deeply unconventional and disturbing book. Incest; murder; a love quadrangle that's driven by equal parts lust and art; characters with names like Webby Greeving, T.V. Daniels, Rosetta Stone, the artist Wade Painter and his paramour Divine--this is one thriller that reads like the postmodern literary love child of Faulkner and Poe.

About the Author:

Dale Peck was born on Long Island and raised in Kansas. He is the author of The Law of Enclosures and Martin and John. He lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0099275724
• ISBN 13: 9780099275725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 458