Out of the three I'm still considering, only one hasn't ever been nominated before, so that's my deciding factor to nominate it this time. I'm not sure how well a fit it is for the club as it's quite violent and has been compared to Quentin Tarantino and Irvine Welsh, but I think that makes it an unusual viewpoint for our club.
It's also been compared to A Clockwork Orange which has been nominated in our club before so it's not unprecedented, heh.
The book is
Stonedogs by Craig Marriner. It's about a young violent group of delinquents in Rotorua, New Zealand (a touristy place known as 'Roto-Vegas'). I think this point of view of a group of young criminals in New Zealand is a viewpoint not heard so much about (at least internationally), so not usual, but the book is also structurally unusual in its points of view. Some parts of the text takes the form of a play complete with stage directions, there are shifts from the regular narrative to an inner narrative, and there are sudden shifts from the narrator's voice to an outside observer's perspective.
Stonedogs has won awards such as the Ockham/Montana New Zealand Book Award Deutz Medal for Fiction or Poetry and the Hubert Church Best First Book Award.
Goodreads 355 pages, 2002, New Zealand
Quote:
Craig Marriner is New Zealand's response to Irivine Welsh and Quentin Tarantino. A novel, which won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, to make you cringe and shudder, then wet yourself laughing. Its raw and scathing prose breaks new ground against the backdrop of a world-view as chilling as the nightly news.
In between drug deals and binge-drinking, reckless driving and street fights, the delinquents of the Brotherhood wage the holiest of wars. Yes, they will derail the Juggernaut before it can suicide … or have a ball trying at least. But when one of them falls prey to Roto-Vegas gang members, the cultural terrorists mobilise in earnest. Revenge takes them on a road-trip - a coming of age from hell. It is a journey to the corners of a collective psyche peopled by nightmares as real as the headlines of today, a New Zealand the tourists and executives had better pray they never stumble upon. Alone and gut-shot, the Juggernaut closing in, the Brotherhood will rally for an audacious final stand, a last ditch fight for their minds and their lives … and perhaps for the future of us all.
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