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Checker and the Derailleurs cover art

Checker and the Derailleurs

By: Lionel Shriver
Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
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Summary

From the Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, this is a novel about what it takes to make it in music. How charisma is worth its weight in gold. And how jealousy can grow until it has eaten away at a musician's heart.

He has that thing that they'd all pay for but can't buy: onstage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band, The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens, clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker's Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood's affections.

An examination of the passion, the jealousy and the friendship of young musicians trying to break out, Checker and the Derailleurs is also about cycling, rock lyrics, glass blowing, a marriage of convenience and - most of all - the mystery of joy.

©1988 Lionel Shriver (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Shriver is a lively storyteller, and she keeps readers guessing to the end.... Checker and the Derailleurs, like its beguiling protagonist, is hard to forget." (People Magazine)
"Checker triumphant is the key, a boy so radiant that his creator (she wrote The Female of the Species) has fallen in love with him. And so has the reader." (Publishers Weekly)
"Funny, clever, and touching." (Library Journal)

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