"To borrow Rakim's words, this book is 'a sack of dynamite, powerful and
bright.' It's a grimly exciting report of the street-level world, a
lyric highway story that pops with real American voices and roars with
an underground river of criminal menace, a strange captivating work of
the imagination, original and great." --Atticus Lish
"Firework is about the gorgeous plasticity of the American language.
It's about motiveless malevolence and the human want to flee. It's about
Jelonnek, and there isn't any figuring Jelonnek. He's a prisoner and a
security guard, a good Samaritan and a creep. Jelonnek will never leave
you. Lucky you, lucky us, to have his wild tale in our hands." --Noy
Holland
"There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's
prose." --Sam Lipsyte
"An explosive road novel." -Vanity Fair
Firework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help
himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered,
perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity and
often blackly humorous, it is also an exhilarating expression of the all
too human impulse to become more than what we seem to be.
Eugene Marten is the author of In the Blind, Waste, and Layman's
Report.
