★美國亞馬遜書店七月小說選書
★美國獨立書商七月Indie Next選書
★《紐約》雜誌「八月必讀的八本書」
★《今日美國》新書選書
★《凱文怎麼了》（We Need to Talk About Kevin）作者Lionel Shriver、《型男飛行日記》（Up in the Air）作者Walter Kirn盛情推薦

一個搖搖欲墜的家庭，一個崩盤邊緣的社會，一個悲傷絕望、底蘊終究溫柔的故事：就算我們失敗了，也能夠被愛。

年輕夫妻尼克與菲比帶著稚兒傑克森，從波士頓跨越大半個美國，搬到位於南加州遠郊的新家。最初，他們注意到許多像他們一樣的專業雙薪夫妻，靠著房地產買賣大賺一筆，興起置產的念頭。況且，在歷經婚外情及一場幾乎讓傑克森喪命的車禍之後，他們亟需一個全新的開始，走出創傷陰霾。

然而小說一開始，讀者便曉得這個夢註定要破滅。尼克一家千里迢迢抵達新社區，放眼卻盡是廢棄的建案、枯黃草坪、幫派少年遊蕩，他們的新家「沒有起火，雖然某一瞬間尼克寧可希望它燒了。」他們碰上經濟瀕臨崩盤最糟糕的時刻，沒有預想的海景美宅，而是泡在水裡、水深腳踝的房子，次貸危機下沒收棄屋的絕望深淵。

社區鄰居或者半夜放火跑路，或者人人自危，相互猜忌；有人夜裡枕著手槍，甚至乾脆在帳篷過夜。尼克的工作是為企業拍攝影片，原本談好的新職務也莫名不翼而飛，只好做起投機生意，假裝擁有回購屋再出租。菲比則擔任藥廠銷售，說服醫生很有一套，自己卻陷入藥癮麻煩。他們的貸款全投入修繕花費，捉襟見肘，越發感到受困，與深不見底的絕望。

漸行漸遠的尼克與菲比，在一個屋簷下各自謀畫回到中產舒適日子的方法。然而，兩人的秘密計畫將無可避免地發生衝突，情況急轉直下……

《Carousel Court》融合理察葉慈《真愛旅程》（Revolutionary Road）令人痛徹心扉的坦誠，與迫切的社會現實，兼具嚴肅文學的野心與驚悚故事的節奏，誘人、駭人，更動人肺腑。小說毫不閃躲地透過一段婚姻映照出現代生活的雙面刃，描繪出一個被失業、棄屋、精神用藥氾濫、網路外遇、莽撞選擇所重創，傷痕累累的社會。

不管你的感情關係狀態為何，本書終將使你既心疼又充滿感激，不過你可能會從此忍不住好奇，另一半對客廳電器在打什麼主意。

 

Joe McGinniss Jr. is the author of Carousel Court and The Delivery Man. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.

 

“A fearless novel about a family and a society on the brink . . . Harrowing but, against all odds, ultimately tender . . . [Nick and Phoebe] offer the possibility of a simple but enormous grace: that we may fail and still be loved, if only imperfectly, if only for a time.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Propulsive . . . Carousel Court is a raw, close-up portrait of a married couple tormented by money problems in the midst of a national recession. . . . The result is thrilling and uncomfortable—a novel that dwells in the filth of love and hate and blame and money in post-crash America with an intimacy that never lets up. . . . The marriage starts to feel not just tense but enormously dangerous. . . . It’s very hard to look away.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Fast . . . Foreboding . . . This couple will stop at nothing to keep their house and marriage afloat. . . . McGinniss spins an edgy tale, often laced with a reporter’s eye for the little details that make characters pop and convey a sarcastic take on what a certain slice of people need nowadays to feel uplifted: anti-anxiety pills, yes, but also the produce section of Whole Foods, where Phoebe has spent so much time that she’s learned ‘the fine mist showering the mustard greens, arugula, and summer squash is on a forty-second cycle—ten seconds on, thirty seconds off.’”
—The Washington Post



“A novel of unrelenting tension . . . Phoebe is a lexicon of contradictions, a kind of update on Maria Wyeth of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. McGinniss also recalls Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust in depicting their road, Carousel Court, as a catalog of strangeness and dangers: from coyotes and marauding home invaders to weird neighbors and crying, screaming cicadas. McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Powerful . . . May have some readers recalling Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming.’ ”—Booklist (starred review)

“Propulsive . . . The novel’s nearly 100 vignettes—many of them gems of concision and electric prose that lay bare the darker sides of Nick and Phoebe, as well as the handful of coworkers and eccentric neighbors who swirl down the drain with them—mirror the discontent seething just beneath the surface of an ersatz American dream. . . . McGinniss is at his best when describing, with anthropological intensity, the throes of a broken relationship.”
—Publishers Weekly

“McGinniss writes with a keen feel for the contemporary zeitgeist. . . . His characters in Carousel Court move in a brutal world of broken personal connections, social unrest, and financial desperation. . . . Yet McGinniss opens a window of hope as Nick and Phoebe survive the mess they make of their lives.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Here it is, the leveraged, frayed, unfaithful, buzzed America that all the baloney entertainment products, including a lot that pose as literature, are designed to cover up. Can you handle the truth? Then step inside. This scathing novel of our strange new century is like nothing else I’ve read in years.”—Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air

“Harrowing, smart, wickedly accurate about the third world of the contemporary United States, and very well written.” —Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk about Kevin