Nobody Move: A Novel [Hardcover]

Denis Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 28, 2009

From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own. Sexy, suspenseful, and above all entertaining, Nobody Move shows one of our greatest novelists at his versatile best.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. National Book Award–winner Johnson (Tree of Smoke) goes lean and mean in this slick noir, originally serialized in Playboy last summer. Jimmy Luntz, a chain-smoking, fast-talking addictive gambler, is in the hole several grand to underworld bad dude Juarez, and he knows his kneecaps have a date with a tire iron when enforcer Gambol nabs him in Bakersfield, Calif. But perennial loser Jimmy gets a lucky break when he escapes, having shot Gambol in the leg and taken off with Gambol's cash-fat wallet. Soon enough, he meets alcoholic vixen Anita Desilvera. She's barreling toward oblivion, having been set up by her prosecutor husband and a corrupt judge in a $2.3 million swindle. As Jimmy and Anita hide out and plan a caper to get the millions, Gambol and Juarez track down Jimmy and learn of the big money at stake. Fates collide in the brutal last act, and, naturally, not everyone makes it out alive. With its crackling dialogue and mercilessly bleak worldview, this stark and darkly funny chronicle of a four-way race to the bottom is a testament to Johnson's sublime sympathy for lowlifes. (May)
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From The New Yorker

So noir it’s almost pitch-black, this follow-up to Johnson’s National Book Award-winning “Tree of Smoke” concerns a lovable loser named Luntz—barbershop-chorus member, Hawaiian-shirt wearer, and inveterate gambler—who is in debt to an underworld bad guy. “My idea of a health trip is switching to menthols and getting a tan,” he tells Anita Desilvera, a beautiful Native American woman whom he beds after a boozy night out, and who has bad guys of her own to escape. Against a desolate Western background of shantytowns and trailer parks, the pair’s story plays out largely according to the genre’s dictates, with wisecrack-laden dialogue and evenly dispersed cliffhangers that are a legacy of the work’s genesis as a serialization in Playboy. But there are also moments of arresting lyrical beauty—a river’s swollen surface under a crescent moon “resembled the unquiet belly of a living thing you could step onto and walk across.”
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374222908
• ISBN-13: 978-0374222901
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #780,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Style, Style, Style June 5, 2009

By Mark Stevens VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Taut and spare, "Nobody Move" is a light year from the depth and complexity of "Tree of Smoke." Hats off to the versatility--one book like Joseph Conrad combined with Charles Dickens, the next out of the shoot like Elmore Leonard mashed up with Dashiell Hammett. On its own, "Nobody Move" is a pleasure if you like deciphering information from oblique dialogue and spare narrative. Your hand will not be held in terms of figuring out who's scamming whom. It's quirky and smart, maybe a bit of "Pulp Fiction" on paper.

"Nobody Move" is a thicket of f-bombs, tangled sheets, motels, bars, cigarettes, lipstick, pay phones, two Cadillacs, .357 Magnums, shotguns, duffel bags and pages and pages of that highly-polished, clipped dialogue that is ready for a screenplay and has precious little to do with the way people really talk. A direct answer is rare.

Recommended for fans of Denis Johnson and this particular hard-boiled genre. Not recommended for those looking for a meaty, rich story. The tension is minimal and the story is over in a minute.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Nobody Move: it didn't move me February 3, 2010

By John Williamson TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Denis Johnson's Nobody Move as an audio CD seemed to have everything going for it. The author had received a National Book Award for Tree of Smoke, and this was said to be a follow-up. The New Yorker had said, "So noir it's almost pitch-black..." It had been in part a serialization in Playboy, and this audio version had Will Patton doing the reading. I was familiar with Mr. Patton's style from a number of his narrations of James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels. All in all, looking forward to listening to these CDs was a fine thing to anticipate.

But it didn't turn out that way.

There's a cast of very marginal characters who, in a slightly noir classic sense, have a penchant for theft and violence. There's Jimmy Luntz, a bottom feeder of a gambler whom loves Hawaiian shirts and barbershop-chorus singing. There's a corrupt judge and lawyer who have embezzled a couple of million dollars, and the lawyer's beautiful wife Anita, who has been framed for the larceny, and she's ready for revenge.

There are more characters, but the problem with all of them is that they really have no depth; the entire story seems flat, yet almost claustrophobic. There's sex, but it also seems flat and not as erotic or even as passionate as one might expect, considering the characters. Jimmy takes Anita to bed after a booze-filled night at a local bar; they hop in bed, fall for each other, copulate, and scheme together. It's as flat as that, and often had this listener to the point of sometimes almost dozing off.

It's tough when you're faced with protagonists in a story one that just can't relate to, or just simply do not care for. Combine this with personalities that make them anything but likable and it makes the story quite difficult to follow, as one can't bond with the characters. Nobody Move falls into this trap with Jimmy and Anita, and at some point, almost everyone in the story decides that violence is the solution to practically any problem, and it's often the first solution they try, with some fairly gruesome results.

Johnson's Nobody Move tries to be is a stretched-tight crime story about a group of low-life types and a few people other with them, but it just doesn't deliver. The paradox is that Will Patton's reading makes the audio version seem worth listening to. He does a good job of capturing moods and sounds with perfection. Each of his voices does seem perfect for the character, and his narration fits what there is to the novel quite well. But it's a fast-paced story that often reads like some movie script; it's almost nothing but dialogue and action, and even Will Patton's expertise as a narrator just doesn't breathe the three-dimensional life into this one the way that this reader/listener hoped that it would. The plot is rather humdrum, but it's told with such energy and style that it keeps the listener's interest for the most part.

However, the bottom line is that writers like John Grisham, James Lee Burke, Lisa Scottoline, Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard just seem to do it better. Read Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard and you'll probably see the difference. And when it comes to narration, just listen to what Will Patton does with James Lee Burke's Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel, to name one of many.

So the end result here is a mediocre 2-star tale coupled with a very good 4-star narration. That averages out to a 3-star product that left me wishing that it could have moved me.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A little empty September 6, 2009

By Hugh L. Scott

Format:Hardcover

Reads like a B-movie script. No depth or character development. Waste of time. Book is same as this review.