Best Seller

The Keep

Name: The Keep
Price: 10.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Jennifer Egan
ISBN: 9780307386618

Ebook

Published on Jul 10, 2007 | 272 Pages

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Published on Jul 10, 2007 | 272 Pages

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Part horror tale, part mystery, part romance … utterly fantastic.”—O, The Oprah Magazine • The bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad brilliantly conjures a world from which escape is impossible and where the keep—the tower, the last stand—is both everything worth protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive.

Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results.

And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.

“Dazzling. . . . Prodigiously entertaining and profoundly moving.” —Madison Smartt Bell, The New York Times Book Review

“Daring. . . . Irresistibly suspenseful.” —The Los Angeles Times

“The events that transpire are so surprising and provocative, the humor so wry, the sheer pleasure of reading The Keep so great, one instantly feels impelled to read it again. . . . Satirically sublime.” —Chicago Tribune

“Roiling and captivating. . . . As you finish this novel, part horror tale, part mystery, part romance, the mind lingers over it, amazed by how vivid Egan has made it, how witty, how disturbing, how credible, and yet how utterly fantastic.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“This neo-gothic tale conjures a wicked form of therapy for BlackBerry-addicted urbanites. . . . Egan’s clever scenario presents Danny’s mental liberation as both thrilling and dangerous—imagination is the ultimate drug, she suggests—and the novel luxuriates in Wilkie Collins–style atmospherics.” —The New Yorker

“Egan is an exceptionally intelligent writer whose joy at appropriating and subverting genres and clichés—from prison memoir to Gothic ghost story—is evident on every dizzyingly inventive page.” —The Washington Post

“[A] remarkable piece of work. . . . Egan effectively echoes the works of Gothic writers such as Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho) and Horace Walpole (Castle of Otranto), fusing a seemingly moribund genre with elements borrowed from the metafictions of John Barth, Italo Calvino and others. It’s tricky; but it’s a trick only a terrifically talented writer could pull off.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“If Kafka’s Joseph K. and Lewis Carroll’s Alice had a son, he would have to be Jennifer Egan’s Danny. . . . No matter how many symbols and zany subplots she juggles . . . the novelist keeps the action moving and the irony biting.” —Boston Sunday Globe

“Intelligent, intense and remarkably intuitive. . . . Jennifer Egan gives us the satisfying thunk of a fully understood if unexpected, kind of sense.” —Nan Goldberg, The New York Observer

“It’s precisely Egan’s talent for tapping into the American subconscious—with deeply intuitive forays into the darker aspects of our technology–driven, image–saturated culture—that has established the author and journalist as a prescient literary voice.” —Vogue

“Jennifer Egan spins a haunting tale. . . . Egan’s brilliance is in balancing the deliciously creepy elements of gothic–castle novels with the dead–on realism of a prisoner’s life, to create a book worth keeping.” —Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Egan’s third novel . . . is a strange, clever, and always compelling meditation on the relationship between the imagination and the captivities (psychological, metaphysical, and even physical) of modern life.” —The Atlantic Monthly

“Visionary . . . at once hyperrealistic and darkly dreamed. . . . With Egan’s powers of invention running at full tilt, The Keep reads like a twenty-first-century mash-up of Kafka, Calvino, and Poe, in which the absurd meets the surreal meet the unspeakable—to edgy, entertaining effect.” —Lisa Shea, Elle

“The Keep is an example of literature responding to current events not with a mirror but an artful mindfuck.” —David Bahr, Time Out New York

“With The Keep, Egan breaks the mold from page one. Her muscular, lively prose achieves a haunting effect. . . . [The book] maintains a frightening, vertiginous velocity. . . . And the immersion in these high-stakes psychological tightrope acts gives The Keep a page-turning horror. . . . Outstanding.” —The Onion

“Egan gets everything right–from the convolutions of the strung-out male mind to the self-deceptions of a drug addict–and her skill will keep you marveling at the pages that you can’t help turning.” —People

“Like an old spirit who refuses to go away, this is one fantasy that haunts long after its physical end.” —The Boston Phoenix

“Egan is both a captivating storyteller and an incisive social observer. . . . The events that transpire are so surprising and provocative, the humor so wry, the sheer pleasure of reading The Keep so great, one instantly feels impelled to read it again, an impulse that is grandly rewarded, so masterful is Egan’s foreshadowing, so nuanced and mysterious is the story. Gothic and chthonic, The Keep is satirically sublime.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Arresting . . . insightful and often funny, so fluid that you actually have the sensation of sinking into these lives . . . strange and beautifully drawn, a place well worth visiting.” —Susan Kelly, USA Today

“Dazzling . . . a metafictional tour de force . . . it draws us in with its compelling realism as surely as anything by Dickens or Balzac—not to mention Henry James, who understood better than anyone how to turn the screw.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Steeped in Gothic mystery and plugged into our wired, up–to–the–minute cultures, The Keep is a hypnotic tale of unexpected connections between isolated people, each concealing secrets that ultimately upend how we see them. . . . Though dark with betrayal and violence (both psychological and literal), The Keep ultimately reveals itself to be a love letter to the creative impulse.” —Newsday

“The Keep is a novel of ideas.” —Poets & Writers

“An engrossing narrative told in prose that’s remarkably fresh and inventive.” —Library Journal

“Atmospheric and tense, this is a mesmerizing story.” —Booklist

“Jennifer Egan is a contemporary American storyteller in the vein of Stephen King or The Sopranos scriptwriters. Her latest novel, a slightly gothic tale of love and the (possibly) supernatural, is a pleasure to read. . . . Egan’s eye and ear for contemporary America places the whole saga too close to home for fantasy.” —Emily Carter Roiphe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A dark and fascinating journey. . . . Egan skillfully builds the tension to a tipping point, culminating in an explosion. . . . The complicated plot comes together seamlessly, marvelously. . . . It’s a novel that engages and haunts the reader, a psychological who’s–who, who–dun–what and how–do–they–go–on. The Keep is a fast an furious read, a perfect summer novel.” —Rocky Mountain News

“Egan . . . makes it all work. How she weaves the story of these four people together—and the unexpected links between them—is fascinating.” —The Oregonian

“The book itself is a stronghold of imaginative story telling, the last stand of the Gothic novel.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Exhilarating . . . Context and borders shift and dissolve, and the reader experiences the precise frisson the gloomy genre of Gothic is meant to convey: the wonder, the terror and the trapped chill of fear that resolves in a mind-expanding realization of the dimensions within your own head. In a word: sublime.” —Linda Marotta, Fangoria

“Part gothic romance, part ghost story, and peppered with Egan’s startling insights into the role of communication and loneliness in contemporary life, this is one brainy page-turner that will have you leaving the lights on at night.” —iVillage

“The Keep is a cinematic treat for the inner eye, moving as it does between the musty dungeons of an ancient power to a prison full of angry men and deep into the souls of the walking dead—those riddled with guilt, lust and loneliness.” —Santa Cruz Sentinel

“The Keep is imaginatively plotted and keeps you guessing until its final chapter. Far from seeming in any way contrived or dependent upon props or plot stratagems, Egan’s storytelling reaffirms the quality that defines ‘literary’ suspense.” —Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

“Jennifer Egan’s The Keep is a page–turner.” —The Austin Chronicle

“An addictive, clever story.” —The Register-Guard

“A psychological drama inside a haunted house tale wrapped in a prison memoir that never fails to stoke the imagination. . . . An original thrill ride of a novel.” —Times-Leader

“A chilling tour de force made eerily real.” —Bookpage

“Egan’s story, like the elusive castle with its unexplored rooms and uncharted underground tunnels, keeps transforming into new realities as she unveils some extraordinary surprises along the way. Jennifer Egan is a very fine writer, whose characters and plot will keep you up late reading and pondering its fascinating turns.” —San Antonio Express-News

Q: What gave you the idea to write about a gothic castle in central Europe? Your descriptions are so evocative, was there a trip or an actual place that inspired you or was this more the traditionally-imagined style of scary place, a la Nosferatu?A: There actually was a "moment of inspiration" for this book. It happened in the winter of 2001, right after I finished Look at Me but had no idea what I would work on next. My husband, who directs plays, had a job in Charleville, France, so we packed up our 8-week-old son and headed over there. My husband was working pretty constantly, and we ended up only having one day to explore our surroundings together. We drove to Bouillon, Belgium, which is where the first Crusade began, led by Godfrey de Bouillon. Godfrey’s ruined castle still stands on a high hill overlooking the town, and we went up there and stumped around in the mud and through lots of damp dark chambers, one of which had some instruments of torture in it. I was transfixed. I felt like there was electric current running through my body, but I wasn’t sure what it meant: that I wanted to write a biography of Godfrey de Bouillon? Probably not. That I wanted to write a novel set in medieval times? Maybe, but that seemed like a tall order for someone with a newborn baby and very little time to do heavy research. I mulled over my reaction to the castle for many months after that visit, and finally decided that what really interested me was the atmosphere of that ruin—the slightly cheesy nostalgia I’d felt for some imagined Medieval past. In other words, a gothic sensibility.That being said, the castle I describe in The Keep is not Godfrey’s castle per se—it’s more generic. I did a fair amount of reading about castle architecture, and at one point I considered trying to draw, or have someone else draw, a floor plan of the castle in The Keep, but in the end I felt that I wanted it to be unknowable in some way—more a literary construct than an actual place.Q: This story has some classic atmospheric ghost-story elements to it: were there any literary influences for that aspect, or do you have any favorites?A: I loved the idea of using some classic gothic elements in this book: an old moldering structure; the possibility of supernatural activity; the sense of being cut off from the “real world”; twins; books inside books; a “found” manuscript. I read a fair amount of gothic literature, and found that I particularly enjoyed the 18th and very early 19th century stuff: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Monk by Matthew Lewis, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin. These books are really crazy out somewhat of control from a literary standpoint, which seemed to suit the gothic genre very well. That being said, I think the most perfect gothic work I’ve read is Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.Q: There’s a recurrent theme about the power relationships between people, such as the one between the two main characters who are cousins, Howie and Danny, which reaches back to their adolescence and an act of supreme cruelty. Is this a theme that greatly interests you?A: I’m not sure power relationships per se have interested me before The Keep, but they came to in the writing of this book. I write pretty unconsciously, with little sense as I begin a first draft of what will end up on the page or what I’ll do with it. As I was writing the character of Danny, I found that he was obsessed with power, and moreover that he believed his obsession with power would lead to his having power. This linked up with one of my central preoccupations in The Keep, which is where to place our disembodied communication (cell phones, internet), which occupies more and more time, on the spectrum of real to unreal. For example, a person can feel, through telecommunications, an extraordinary sense of power and reach—a sense of being intimately linked to many people all over the world. But looked at another way, they may be isolated and disconnected. So are they powerful or not? Danny embodies that question.Q: This book is also a wonderful meditation on the art of writing itself and the use of the imagination, particularly in the simultaneous story of prisoners in a fiction-writing class. Do you believe in the power of the imagination to change lives and was it difficult to write about the art of writing? Have you, like the character Holly who teaches writing to the inmates, ever taught writing?A: I have taught writing, though I can’t claim to have revolutionized anyone’s life or perspective with my teachings, as Holly does. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised by the affirming note this novel ends on; in some sense it really is a paean to the imagination, but I didn’t set out to write that. I began The Keep with an interest in the way the internet has made so much of our experience imaginary—we aren’t dealing with actual people, just people we conjure up in our own minds and then react to. But I ended up feeling that our ability to invent worlds and describe them in words—to tell stories—is one of the most thrilling aspects of our humanity: it gives us the power to build, to escape, to transform ourselves. Back to the idea of power, I ended up feeling that our imagination is the most basic, inviolable locus of power in each of us. It’s also a source of danger; when our inventive tools turn against us, we become paranoid, and the whole world is our enemy. At which point we can become quite aggressive in our efforts to defend ourselves from it.Q: The character of Danny, the downtown New York 30-something, is a keen observer of life, always registering his sensory impressions, but also described as having “invisible skills” like detecting instantly who in a room has power and possessing a certain radar that lets him know how to talk to anyone. Qualities that are also useful to a novelist. Did you relate much to his or to any other character?A: I tend not to write about myself or people like me if I can help it. This is partly because I don’t like the feeling of being exposed, but more, it’s because I like to escape from my own life as I write. So I didn’t imagine Danny as having a novelist’s sensibility quite, though now that you put it that way, I realize that my connection to him is through his alert, observational tendencies. I felt a kind of hilarious affection for Danny, because he’s so self deceiving; in a sense, he’s bet his life so far on the mistaken belief that proximity to powerful people is power, a little like a child who thinks that because he’s at a grown-up party, he’s a grown-up. I was interested in that brand of intractable childishness, and I wondered whether telecommunications technology, especially the internet, makes it possible to fool oneself with fantasies of adult life as a substitute for actually growing up. And that’s something I can’t relate to personally, because I’m 43—part of the last generation of people to grow up without a computer. I didn’t touch one until I was in college.Q: How was it writing from the perspective of men? Were there unexpected challenges involved? A: I loved it, for the reason I mentioned above: I don’t like writing about myself or people like me. And what better way to avoid it than to write from a male point of view—or, as it turned out, from the point of view of a man writing about a man? I’d been edging toward it for a while in short stories, which I often use to explore technical issues before I tackle them in a long form. I found it surprisingly easy to write as a man, but I didn’t trust those instincts; I’ve read novels written by men from a female perspective that were laughably off, and I didn’t want to make that mistake. I was thrilled when male readers found the manuscript credible.Another advantage of writing from the perspective of not just a man but a decidedly non-literary man, was that it gave me a chance to move away from lyricism. That was something I’d been wanting to do for a while. I felt tired of pretty writing, full of lovely sounds and apt metaphors. I wanted something completely different, a voice that would never try to say anything beautifully, but would instead have to struggle to say it at all. Any beauty would have to come about by accident. I found that incredibly freeing—a release from a more lyrical sensibility. Q: Another theme in the book is about the not-so-great need to be plugged in constantly to modern technology: cell phones, the internet, satellite dishes, and the disembodied and fractured nature of this kind of communication. In a perhaps-related thought, Danny observes about the castle: “[he had] a weird impression that the long-ago past was in perfect shape, but the closer you got to today the more things collapsed into this ruined state.” Do you feel this at all true of our modern world?A: I have huge worries about the modern world, particularly our ability to destroy ourselves either slowly, by poisoning our environment, or quickly through weaponry. But I’m wary of the myth that things were better before—it’s too easy. Would I have wanted to live before the time of antibiotics? Before women could vote or hold most kinds of jobs? I don’t think so. That being said, I was curious in The Keep, as in Look at Me, about the degree to which technology has changed us internally, as human beings. Is the human experience qualitatively different for a person who exchanges a hundred emails and fifty phone calls a day, than for a person who wrote letters by hand and waited days or weeks for a response, inhabiting an environment that was silent unless another person was in the room with them? I’ll never know, of course, but those kinds of questions fascinate me.Q: The language/dialogue in the book has, at times, a distinctly and delightfully popular feel to it, as well as a lot of humor: was it fun to write in that vernacular?A: It was incredibly fun. I’ve moved more and more toward humor in my work, I’m not sure why. The big question in The Keep was whether a book could be funny and scary at the same time. I couldn’t think of other books that had made me feel both those things, and I’ll be curious to see how readers think I fared in The Keep. As for the vernacular speech, I was interested in letting gothic nostalgia collide with Danny’s contemporary sensibility, because the two seemed so irreconcilable. The gothic environment is traditionally about being cut off. I think a lot of the humor in the book arises from the juxtaposition of hipster connectedness with spooky remoteness.Q: This is a much-different novel than your previous one, Look at Me. Did you make much of a conscious effort to go in an entirely different direction?A: It wasn’t a conscious effort, but that seems to be the pattern for me. I work a long time on my books, and I tend to feel that I’ve exhausted a particular direction by the time I finish one. My first novel, The Invisible Circus, is steeped in nostalgia for the 1960s, which I felt very keenly growing up in San Francisco in the seventies. I didn’t think I could ever exhaust that nostalgia in myself, but when I finished that book it was gone. For Look at Me, I was taken with the idea of writing a slightly futuristic satire about the impact of image culture on millennial America. Having finished that, I found myself wanting to move into a more imaginary, consciously literary environment—hence the setting of The Keep. I still wanted to explore contemporary issues, but without having to contend with a particular time or place. And having set those parameters, I basically guaranteed that it would be nothing like Look at Me.I should say that for me, one of the hardest things about beginning a new novel is settling on the right voice for it. The voice of the previous novel is still with me at first, but it’s an annoying holdover, useless to render up the entirely different world I’m trying to create. Once I’ve found the new voice, which comes about after many months of trial and error and banging my head against the wall, then I’m able to move more easily into the new work.Q: Are you working on anything new yet?A: I’m researching a new novel, which I think will be set in New York right after World War II. The timing and specificity of that choice suggests that it will have little in common with The Keep, or with any of my earlier novels. I can’t imagine anything remotely gothic happening in this new one. Having enjoyed partaking of that atmosphere for a while, I feel sated, and ready to move on to something completely different—which will require a new voice and technical skills I may not yet possess in order to be fully realized.

Author

Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the story collection Emerald City. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope, All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her husband and sons in Brooklyn.Jennifer Egan is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com or visit www.prhspeakers.com.

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