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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2003)
34>Mt Mt’IW 18.2003 atingout atingout ! Lucy's catingout ▼............... »atingout Southern gothic ucv * 1 Marshall Moore digs deep in order to break the surface [J by ¿inner Monday through Saturday 704 NW 21st & Irving 503.226.6126 ___ Grand Opening Stop by either of our two locations & enter to win one of 2 Mountain Bikes No purchase necessary • Drawings held 7/31/03 arshall Moore is drawn to dark stories. “1 like horror,” he says, “and I want to write about the horrific experiences people could have in real life.” He calls his new Fxxik, The Concrete Sky, “a trenchant literary thriller with a Southern accent, a suspenseful black com edy about murderously inclined Genera tion Xers with a lot of money.” Excellent. The soft-spoken Southerner, who just moved from Portland to Seattle, will read July 24 at Annie Blooms B<x»ks in Mult nomah Village. The Concrete Sky follows Chad and Jonathan, a pair of troubled young men who meet and fall in love in a psychiatric hospital. Like many authors, Mixire borrows bits and pieces from his own life for his characters. “But they’re not me,” he claims. “I’ve been overwhelmed, overeducated, surround ed by adults and a wise-ass like Chad, but I’ve also been the instigator that Jonathan is. 1 see the interaction between the two as a conversation between two sides of myself." Mcxire set the novel in a small eastern North Carolina town not far from where he Marshall Moore reads from his Southern thriller, grew up underneath the “concrete sky” in Greenville. “In the South, the humidity is The Concrete Sky, July 24 at Annie Blooms Books so thick and so oppressive that the sky liter- ally turns a silvery white color,” he explains. His withdrew,” says the author. “It was really an hometown is “about two hours away from any accident. 1 was a troubled 16-year-old with 1986 hair.” He avoided criminal charges by thing you’d actually want to visit.” lying well and having a good lawyer—a trick hen Mtxire was a teen-ager, he was he also ascribed to Chad and Jonathan. kicked out of a prestigious high school The Concrete Sky, he says, is about “mov for various illegal activities including ing from a place of being really overwhelmed setting his dorm room on fire. “Officially 1 by the circumstances of your life and feeling out of control to getting to a place where you are finally getting your head above water again.” Moore understands the trauma Chad T he C oncrete S ky experiences when he wakes up in a mental by Marshall Moore; Harrington Park Press, hospital suspected of attempting suicide. “It’s 2003; $17 95 hardcover like having your head down a rabbit hole...I’ve been through a lot of ■ t the opening of Marshall what Chad has been through in A Moore’s The Concrete Sky, a my childhood. 1 wanted the ■ ■drunken Chad Sobcan tum novel to show what it was like bles a balcony and breaks his to crawl out and get back into wrist. His brother, Martin, who has . some sense of normalcy.” tormented Chad for being gay since A Moore works as a sign lan- childhood, convinces the emergency B guage interpreter, a career he B fell into when he developed a room doctors that the fell was a sui R crush on a deaf boy he sat cidal jump, and Chad wakes up to find himself locked in the hospital’s next to in a college Latin psychiatric unit for observation. class. It was during an inter- ||B pretation job in a Washing- In the hospital Chad meets fellow ’ patient Jonathan Fairbanks, who wit ton, D.C., juvenile hall nessed the murder/suicide of his that his future became clear to wealthy parents and now suffers severe him. “The kids were given an assignment to post-traumatic stress. The two hit it off, but map out where they wanted to be in five there are questions about Jonathan’s involve years, and 1 realized that 1 didn’t want to be ment in the deaths of his parents and two interpreting in five years... 1 wanted to be a other hospital patients. writer.” Upon his release, Chad is called to the bed Since that fateful decision, dozens of his side of his comatose, cancer-ridden mother, who short stories and essays have been published in has left him a letter asking him to end her life in magazines and anthologies. While The Concrete return for the promise of a financial windfall. Sky is his first novel, he is already through the Chad and Jonathan’s romance is a journey initial draft of a second, Invisible Hand, which is of psychological tension, intrigue and suspense. about casinos and the loss of privacy. JH 1545 NE Sandy Blvd (503) 233-4540 622 NE Grand Ave (503) 234-2525 Open 8am-8pm M-F • 11am-8pm Sat Open 8am-7pm M-F W REVIEWS I FOR A GREAT STEAK, LOOK FOR THE REVOLVING STEAK SIGN EXCEPT IN BEAVERTON. WHERE THE CITY WOULDN’T LET US HAVE ONE 1946 ,, - f O* revolving steak sign has become a landmark ui Portland T 1 sign o] qiutho H here \<>u know you can get a great steak. HT.fi uj th KlTLHEra dinner at a fair price L / »fortunately, we couliln J get that same sMtH wWwWItW MiiWlMlI sign in Beaverton. But honestly, we re not that hard to find home of the 72 02. steak CO I Y — F loyd S klaver M Social Hour ..5:00-6:30 M-F appetizers & 4nnks for less $ The Ultime tn Sandwich! BOOKS 105th A SE Stark • 503-252-4171 ~ Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy at Griffith Dr - 503-644-1492 the concrei? It thoughtfully tackles grand themes like death, euthanasia, insanity and homophobia without interrupting tire page-mming story. Intense and insightful, The Concrete Sky is an entertaining read for fans of literary fiction. —FS I M arshall M oore reads from The Concrete Sky 7:30 p.m. July 24 at Annie Blooms Books, 7834 S.W Capitol Highway. F loyd S klaver is a Portland free-lance writer.
