All Involved

Description

That's when it hits me. I'm staring at a war zone. In South Central. On an April night in 1992, Payasa learns that her older brother has been stabbed to death, his body left out in the road to rot. He was never involved. He was innocent. He didn't even carry a gun. And that messes with the rules, even for Lynwood, even for the streets. But it's the first day of the LA riots, and the city is tearing itself apart. Fire-fighters, graffiti artists, nurses and law enforcement - all of them connected by this murder - find themselves caught in the mayhem. Every cop is distracted, and for the people who see the law as an enemy, it's a chance to settle old scores. That's just too good an opportunity to miss.

Ryan Gattis is a novelist, lecturer at Chapman University in Southern California, and member of LA urban art crew UGLAR.

All Involved is a symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel. It is visceral and adrenalin-fuelled, yet tender and even darkly comic. It is audacious, unflinching and subversive. It doesn't judge. It swallowed me whole. -- David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS Do not resist All Involved. It's the most compelling, moving, shocking and world-expanding novel you'll read all year; it sucks you in, then spits you out, permanently changed. I loved it with a frankly scary evangelical zeal. -- Charlotte Mendelson, Orange Prize-shortlisted author of WHEN WE WERE BAD and ALMOST ENGLISH A high-octane speedball of a read: gritty, nerve-racking, sometimes excruciating in its violence and at the same time animated by a bone-deep understanding of its characters' daily lives... All Involved has the verbal ardor of a Richard Price novel, the pungent verisimilitude of Sanyika Shakur's riveting 1993 memoir of gang life ... and the choral energy of a Rashomon-style documentary -- Michiko Kakutani New York Times Marvelous ... Violent, compassionate, horribly funny -- Sir Patrick Stewart All Involved is a monumental achievement. Ryan Gattis takes the reader into the broken, outraged heart of Los Angeles during the '92 riots and doesn't blink once at what he finds there. -- Dennis Lehane, author of SHUTTER ISLAND Corrosive, timely, vividly realized scenes of urban warfare and thwarted dreams by a writer who clearly knows his subject: the netherworld of Los Angeles in the early 1990's. -- Joyce Carol Oates, author of THEM and BLONDE All Involved is an astounding, vital novel. LA riots, 1992, brought to life with scorching intensity and empathy -- Matt Haig, author of THE HUMANS Full of brutality with flashes of tenderness, this is an adrenaline-fulled, roller-coaster ride of a novel. Hold on tight. -- Cathy Rentzenbrink The Bookseller All Involved is a high-octane, polyphonic narrative that hit me with the force of a nuclear strike. It is a scorching, bowl-along book with fierce integrity and I heartily recommend it to all who like compelling committed fiction -- Patrick McCabe, author of THE BUTCHER BOY Shocking, visceral and humane, All Involved is a perfectly-paced, heart-breaking portrait of a city tearing itself apart. Gattis has created characters who live on in the imagination long after you have read the final page. -- Paula Hawkins, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN A tour de force ... without glamorising his subject, there's a lyricism in the vernacular and street language that makes it hard not to be moved ... a powerful work of fiction GQ Powerful...All Involved creates a vivid picture of a world slowly being broken apart, put through the wringer and pieced together again South African Sunday Times Poignant, fierce and often graphically brutal USA Today Simultaneously empathetic and unsparing New Yorker This novel is so blood-soaked that if you sprayed it with luminol, it would glow like a beacon. Sunday Express [A] claustrophobic, polyphonic portrait... the novel is surprisingly elegant and at times even beautiful, but mainly it is overwhelmingly physical. It winds you in the gut and blasts you in the brain... Several days on from reading it and I'm still reeling -- Claire Allfree Independent A fascinating and compelling read, and a thought provoking look at the broken nature of society across the pond Big Issue [A] truly remarkable novel ... this kaleidoscopic work is unflinching, unsettling and unforgettable ... it deserves, frankly, to sell more copies than Trainspotting Scotsman All Involved could be characterised as The Wire meets Quentin Tarantino on the set of 24, the LA-set TV thriller that unspools in real time. But the deftly structured plot that weaves intricately through the novel with its interleaved and overlapping characters recalls John Dos Passos's 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer, which brought to life the teeming, multitudinous variety and energy of Jazz Age New York...All Involved offers that most difficult and nebulous thing in fiction: it reads true. Financial Times [A] briskly suspenseful gangster yarn...highly entertaining Guardian The pulsating violence and bubbling tension of multi-racial LA is brought to life here with seething, visceral bloodiness Sydney Morning Herald Full of energy, really high-octane...Wonderfully exciting BBC Radio Saturday Review The book [starts] with a rush of adrenaline that sweeps the reader along for the entire novel...be prepared for a visceral ride BBC Open Book One of the most gripping portrayals of alienation and violence I have ever read. I f you should only read a book this year - All involved is it -- Jens Lapidus Visceral, harrowing, pulsating exploration of violence and unexpected consequences set during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 Irish Times