by ThomasDyja (Author)
Steven Armour is a man at a crossroad: his rise up the career ladder has slowed to a crawl, and his family is slipping out of control. But life takes a dramatic turn for Steven when, on a whim, he joins a local group of Civil War re-enactors. Assigned to immerse himself in the life of Private John Trow, Steven soon finds that the complex drills of the Union army seem to come to him naturally and his growing infatuation with Polly Kellogg, the wife of the regiment's captain, fires a passion that had cooled with his own wife. While the world around him races faster and faster toward the millennium, Steven turns to the simple consolations of nineteenth-century life. But so thoroughly does Steven embrace the life of John Trow that even Steven begins to wonder if he is just playing a part, or whether the unquiet spirit of John Trow is taking him over. As Steven's identity slips through his fingers, he must ask himself what - and who - he is willing to sacrifice to become the man he believes he should have been. Meet John Trow is a moving love story and a haunting, darkly comic exploration of the links between past and present.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 06 Mar 2003
ISBN 10: 0099449676
ISBN 13: 9780099449676
Book Overview: 'Chucking it all in - all the pointless anxiety, all the buzzing lite crap with which we surround ourselves - is an urge everyone feels, or ought to. In Meet John Trow, Thomas Dyja uses that impulse to drive a novel that's part satire, part domestic drama, part post-modern ghost story. And the whole thing works like a dream' - Kurt Andersen