[ZR5]⇒ [PDF] Shella Canongate Crime Classics Andrew H Vachss 9781841950143 Books

Shella Canongate Crime Classics Andrew H Vachss 9781841950143 Books

Download As PDF : Shella Canongate Crime Classics Andrew H Vachss 9781841950143 Books

Shella Canongate Crime Classics Andrew H Vachss 9781841950143 Books

The true path of the warrior is that of sacrifice.

Ghost is a man without a name, without a partner, without a crew... adrift in a bleak hellscape, betrayed at every turn, seeking the one woman who ever meant anything after she fled and disappeared into the underground with a series of false names...

By happenstance, he found his true family... family of choice... brothers who recognized him and embraced him as one of their own... this lethal autistic shell of a man.

I have read everything Vachss has written, and Shella has a special place in my heart. Others may not feel the same. This is not his best book, but it is my favorite.

Other books I recommend are: Blossom (in the Burke series, but more of a stand alone outside the city without his crew), Getaway Man, and Two Trains Running.


Tags : Shella (Canongate Crime Classics) [Andrew H. Vachss] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SHELLA,Andrew H. Vachss,Shella (Canongate Crime Classics),Canongate Books Ltd,1841950149,VIN1841950149,Mystery & Detective - General,Crime & mystery,Fiction,Fiction Mystery & Detective General,MysterySuspense

Shella Canongate Crime Classics Andrew H Vachss 9781841950143 Books Reviews

With "Shella," Vachss strips the narrative down even further than in his Burke novels. The first-person delivery rivals Forrest Gump.
The coverflap lays it out. Ghost is (metaphorically) an alligator; his body and skills have grown during captivity, but his soul is crippled in its youth. With "no experience of nurture or education," he becomes a bare-hands killer with no sense that lives might matter beyond their bounty. The hardback edition features a drawing of an alligator. The corners of the page show a diamond, a spade and a club...no heart. After Ghost's last prison term, he needs to find Shella, the "sole witness to his own humanity." If she's gone, Ghost loses his only evidence of hope in human connection.
The plot involves no self-discovery. Other killers help him find Shella and he helps them by infiltrating a white supremacist stronghold and closing in on the leader. The events serve a cautionary theme. When Ghost (more than once) shows a steadiness and strength of hand ideal for a life-giving surgeon, it's too late for that. When Shella and Ghost reunite, it's also too late.
"Shella" is a sad picture of what people become, by society's doing and by their own. Shella and Ghost weren't torn apart from each other. They were each torn apart when they met, and needed each other to become more or less whole. This is Vachss' best example of dead souls still walking around, playing their roles. An alligator has no greater destiny than One More Day...
Vachss is a fantastic and descriptive writer. His Burke novels are wonderful, engaging and thrilling. I hope they keep on coming forever!!
Not up to the standards of his other books
Vachss is as you have read him. Tough, tight, gritty. I enjoy his books and am working my way through all his novels. But Vachss is not for the squeamish or those who can't deal with the ungodly things people do to children. There is no sugar-coating here. Once you've seen that side of life you know how accurate he is.
Just what I was looking for! Fair price and shipped quickly.
Andrew Vachss is not for everyone. He might depress some or scare others. He tells a dark story from the point of view of a person who is highly flawed. If you like the Burke novels, this one is worth reading. This could have been a friend of co-inmate of Burke's. The Ghost has a lot in common with Wesley, in that it is what is missing from him that is more frightening that what is in him that makes him a remorseless killer.
As the title denotes, I am focusing this review on the actual narrative performance by Shella's reader, Phil Gigante, as opposed to reviewing the novel itself. The book is my all-time favorite, hands-down. I have read it, front-to-back, between thirty and forty times in the last sixteen years since discovering it in the ninth grade. I consider myself something of an authority on this book. Written from the first-person perspective of a horrifically and developmentally damaged sociopath, Shella's narration is a bit tricky. 95% of the story is reported by a detached ghost lacking the capacity to experience or express most of the spectrum of human emotion. He does two things only kills and waits. The novel is his search for Shella, his missing woman, the one person in the world he has ever experienced any level of emotion with and hence his key to a sense of existence.

Due to the placid and volatile nature of the main character's psychology, a professional reader may have a hard time developing an accurate tone and manner. Reading as John, the narrator, I both theorize and contend from experience, is akin to portraying the voice of a stalking crocodile, a calm predator floating invisibly in the water. Again, the only two things that John did before Shella came along was kill and wait.

Gigante holds it down. After finding his rhythm a quarter of the way into the book -- after he seems to realize that less inflection is more with John's voice -- the story finally becomes believable from out his mouth. His characterizations are great; Misty was a little more spastic and flailing than I ever imagined her in the book myself, but she IS an abused sex worker and Gigante's voice certainly reflects an imagined facet of that. The personality he gives Monroe is superb, and the sophisticated drawl he brings to the Leader of the Nazi enclave is rich with self-righteous charm. Smaller characters like Mack, Murray, and the crazy man with the machines all get their individual dues, but his best performance is in the perfect likeness of the Indian, Wolf of Long Eyes. His personification of Wolf is amazing, the spirit of the old, wise Native American Assassin channeled with grace, authority, and a touch of humor. John's interactions with Wolf -- his development of, perhaps, his first real friendship -- were always my favorite parts of the book, and Gigante brings them to life.

I was one of the hardest judges this audio performance could face, and I give it four-out-of-five stars. I gave it five stars above because I did not want to affect the ratings of the book itself, which should get six. Because I know this story so well, it is hard not to feel as though Mr. Gigante might have missed something subtle between the lines of Vachss' writing, but having experienced the book in an entirely new light and catching little pieces of information for the first time in Gigante's fluid delivery, it's also hard not to feel like I might have been missing something too. I was looking for a suitable interpretation of my favorite book -- something I can listen to several dozen times over the next sixteen years. Since it just received its second full broadcast in less than a month, I guess I found it.
The true path of the warrior is that of sacrifice.

Ghost is a man without a name, without a partner, without a crew... adrift in a bleak hellscape, betrayed at every turn, seeking the one woman who ever meant anything after she fled and disappeared into the underground with a series of false names...

By happenstance, he found his true family... family of choice... brothers who recognized him and embraced him as one of their own... this lethal autistic shell of a man.

I have read everything Vachss has written, and Shella has a special place in my heart. Others may not feel the same. This is not his best book, but it is my favorite.

Other books I recommend are Blossom (in the Burke series, but more of a stand alone outside the city without his crew), Getaway Man, and Two Trains Running.