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Rage Is Back: A Novel
Unavailable
Rage Is Back: A Novel
Unavailable
Rage Is Back: A Novel
Audiobook9 hours

Rage Is Back: A Novel

Written by Adam Mansbach

Narrated by Danny Hoch, The Gza and Wyatt Cenac

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

A fearless novel about the price of revenge from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the F*** to Sleep

Kilroy Dondi Vance is an eighteen-year-old mixed-race Brooklynite who deals pot and goes to prep school on scholarship, all while growing up in the shadow of his absentee father, Billy Rage, a legendary graffiti writer who disappeared from New York City in 1989 following a public feud with MTA police chief Anastacio Bracken.

Now it's 2005. Bracken is running for mayor of New York City. And who should Dondi discover on a rooftop in Brooklyn but his father, newly returned to the city and ready to settle the score. The return of Rage and the mayoral race of Bracken prompt a reunion of every graffiti writer who mattered in the 1980s-in order to thwart Bracken with the greatest graffiti stunt New York City has ever seen.

Rage Is Back delivers a mind-bending journey through a subterranean world of epic heroes and villains. Moving through the city's unseen communities, from the tunnel camps of the Mole People to the drug dens of Crown Heights, Rage Is Back is many things: a dramatic, hilarious thrill ride; a love letter to NYC that introduces the most powerful urban underdog narrator this side of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and a literary tour de force from a writer on the brink of real stardom.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 10, 2013
ISBN9781101605257
Unavailable
Rage Is Back: A Novel
Author

Adam Mansbach

ADAM MANSBACH is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the F**k to Sleep and You Have to F*****g Eat, as well as the California Book Award-winning novel The End of the Jews.

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Reviews for Rage Is Back

Rating: 4.130434782608695 out of 5 stars
4/5

23 ratings6 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    RAGE IS BACK gives up a dramatic and unglamorous opening into the amazing and sometimes terrifying world of above and underground graffiti train painting.The ripping along plot slows only when Cloud gets busted and the unreliable narrator scene evolves:"Don't forget, those things we wrote on the trains were words. We didn't ramble on with them, either.Said what we had to say and stepped. More than I can say for some of the books I read in the joint.Boring a mufucka locked in an eight-by-ten for years on top of years, now that's a fuckin accomplishment."I then teased along on reading the plans for the ball-busting train bombing of all times, but loved the upshot.Adam Mansbach makes readers feel they are REALLY THERE with his characters, wit, and locales, from the milesunderground in New York City to a hidden jungle, from train yards to the magic missing day, and beyond...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a terrific book that offers a fascinating look inside the world of the graffiti artists. The author has an impressive breadth of knowledge of this world, along with hip-hop music, but unlike some authors (like Michael Chabon in Telegraph Avenue) that knowledge never seems to be show-offy, and always works in service of the story. I can't say I always fully understood all the urban slang, but I never felt too confused to follow the story and the funny, quick repartee that's exchanged between the characters. The novel has a great protagonist as narrator - the superbright teenaged Dondi, who was abandoned by his legendary graffiti artist father, Rage, and was raised by his tough-talking mother, Karen. After getting expelled from a private school for selling pot, Dondi is left with not much to do until his father arrives back on the scene, determined to protest the political rise of a Transit Authority cop who is now running for mayor. Back in the heyday of graffiti writing, that cop killed a member of Rage's crew, and after a prolonged effort to let all of NYC know through his art on trains, Rage went underground and spent time with shamans in South America - leaving Dondi without a father for most of his youth, a fact Dondi can't help but resent even while all the people he knows through the graffiti world worship his father as a legend. There is one crazy fantastical element to the story - a building staircase that lets you jump 24 hours into the future - but for the most part it's a straightforward and brilliantly clever tribute to a bygone era and an attempt by a global band of graffiti writers to resurrect the golden days in an effort to undermine the candidacy of that rogue cop. By the way, if you have the opportunity to see Mansbach for a reading, be sure to go. My wife and I had the good fortune to see him at Brookline Booksmith in MA. He puts on a funny and entertaining show, and has a great, sarcastic wit, while fully respecting his audience.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. I don't know much about the history of graffiti and I've never been to New York, but this book introduced me to both in a really fun way. Dondi is such a great protagonist with a unique voice and ways of describing things in a way that made me laugh and stay connected to the story. At times, he seems way too cool, but at other times, he's vulnerable and honest and seems younger than he is. Dondi is a complex character with a complicated relationship with his parents. As his father re-enters his life, Dondi is forced to confront his relationship with his parents and figure out what he wants from life. The absent father plot device is over used and cliche in a lot of ways, but it doesn't feel like that in this novel.With New York City and the graffiti subculture as its background, this book weaves a fantastic story with a colorful cast of characters. Even though there are some elements of the bizarre in this book and some of the slang was way over my head, I highly recommend it to everyone.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a mess of a book. So fluid, dynamic and amazing in parts - the author creates his own unique world and culture with great success. However, this brilliance is balanced with flawed plot lines, contrived characters lazy chapters lacking purpose or reason. It is a fun read but also frustrating to wade thru. Recommended for people who like Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Eighteen-year-old Kilroy Dondi Vance has pretty much messed up his young life at the beginning of Adam Mansbach’s Rage is Back. He’s been expelled from his elite prep school, broken up with his girlfriend and has been kicked out of his mother’s apartment. While couch surfing between selected friends, trying not to wear out his welcome, he begins to hear rumors that his father Billy Rage (a famed graffiti artist missing for sixteen years), has resurfaced, leaving underground tunnels awash in graffiti. Ostensibly he has returned to settle on old score with Anastacio Bracken, a former cop - now President of the MTA and mayoral candidate, who hounded their old crew, killing one of their most vital members. But it also gives Dondi a chance to know and understand his father and to go on adventure with him, if he can find it in his heart to put years of hurt and anger aside.

    I loved this novel from the moment I picked it up and heard Dondi’s fresh, inventive and confident voice relating the story of his unique parents, history and point of view. Though he didn’t grow up when he would have remembered the graffiti culture in which his parents were steeped as both innovators and leaders, he has taken their history, and that of the graffiti tribes, to heart. He uses it to create the mythology of his father and his absence in his life, and to explain the embittered woman his mother has become. Dondi is an extremely precocious teenager; his ruminations are long, rambling and sophisticated, and just maybe slightly unreliable. I wondered if I would get tired of his posturing (oftentimes he reminded me of a modern-day Holden Caulfield), but as interspersed as it is with surprising confessions, insight and vulnerability, it held my attention throughout. Mansbach deftly explores an incredible time in NYC history and he makes the art of graffiti breathe with careful conveyance of its lifestyle, music, code of honor, and talented and colorful people, while incorporating philosophy, sociology, and a little magical realism for good measure. I wouldn’t want to go back to a New York City filled with graffiti-laden billboards and street corners, but Mansbach illustrates the ways in which it is a value filled avenue of expression and legitimate art form.

    The novel is set in 2005, and frequently flashes back to New York City of the 1980′s. Luckily for me, I had the slimmest foothold in knowing what what was going on from, like Dondi, having heard stories from family, and from having seen pictures and heard music from the time he was talking about, so it was much more accessible for me from the start in a way that it might not be for other readers. Like Ready Player One and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Rage is Back it requires an adjustment period to get used to the references and the voice, but it is worth taking the time to get to know these characters and to experience their journey. Highly Recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is exciting. The writing is exciting! It's hysterical and strange is it breaks the fourth wall and it's irreverant and lovely. Really enjoying my journey through this.

    OMG OMG OMG. This book is so fantastic. I'm in love. With everything ever.

    It's a caper. It's language might get under some folks' skin. It's urban NYC graffiti culture and as such is not a gentle read. But it's incredibly written - kind of ridiculously intelligent and witty. Heartfelt, fascinating... I'm definitely going to buy this one.