- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (5 Aug 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099535491
- ISBN-13: 978-0099535492
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.3 x 19.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,101,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Black Flies
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More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
A searing, intense, hugely admired novel set amongst Harlem's ambulance crews: E.R. meets The Wire.
Product Description
Shannon Burke earned stunning reviews for his debut novel, Safelight, and now he returns with the same minimalist intensity in this arresting follow-up.
Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-1990s Harlem. It is a ground's eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, unhinged medics, and hopeless patients, the dark humour in bizarre circumstances, and one medic's fight to balance his instinct to help against the growing callousness within him that witnessing daily horrors seems to encourage. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his long-serving partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.
A gripping and unforgettable novel about a young man's indelible experiences, Black Flies describes the passing of the torch from the older to the younger man, friendship in extreme conditions, deterioration, despair, and then redemption.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Great book, im reading it at the moment and i dont want it to end. need to find more books by this author.
Nice easy read, if a bit grim, but un-put-downable!
Nice easy read, if a bit grim, but un-put-downable!
Format:Paperback
Agree with both previous reviews (except it isn't post 9-11. It's explicitly the early 90s. The age of the older paramedics, who were screwed up in Vietnam, also adds to that.)
Burke knows how to write. Even when it is trying to be lurid and grim, the book retains a humanity, and a clarity that many others in the genre I call 'scalpel porn' do not.
Burke knows how to write. Even when it is trying to be lurid and grim, the book retains a humanity, and a clarity that many others in the genre I call 'scalpel porn' do not.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The author worked as a paramedic in Harlem and at times you wonder how true to life this book is. It really draws you into the story, and although there are medical terms and procedures mentioned it does not ruin the book at all.
It is based around a team of paramedics and the incidents they see, and how they deal with life after seeing so much life, death and daily horrors. How being a paramedic can ruin relationships, unhinge people and how mentally strong you have to be. How people treat paramedics when they are helping them, I felt it was very insightful and actually works alot better than I thought it would when I first read the back cover.
This is a little gem of a story, that is pretty gritty as well.
It is based around a team of paramedics and the incidents they see, and how they deal with life after seeing so much life, death and daily horrors. How being a paramedic can ruin relationships, unhinge people and how mentally strong you have to be. How people treat paramedics when they are helping them, I felt it was very insightful and actually works alot better than I thought it would when I first read the back cover.
This is a little gem of a story, that is pretty gritty as well.
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