Though there were a few places that just were a bit off, this book was an incredible read. The language is often exquisite - spare, minimal - with the tiniest detail illuminating the scene perfectly. As I lost myself in the story, I found it increasingly more difficult to maintain the cadence, instead rushing through the words to see what would happen next. This should not be a fast read, nor one that is easily picked up and put down or read in a noisy environment.

Be forewarned that there is graphic violence that is made no less horrific by the spareness of the writing.

64th book of 2023. #7 in my challenge with Alan: read a prose/poetry book.

3.5. This is two birds with one stone, a book towards the challenge and an impromptu recommendation from my manager. I'd never heard of it. Turns out it's a Goldsmith winner and was longlisted for the Booker prize back in 2018.

Robertson has written an interesting, longform prose poem about a man returning from the Second World War, and rather than going to face his family back in Nova Scotia, he goes to LA. It's about the decline of the city as well as Walker's PTSD. Throughout there are italicised flashbacks from his time fighting. I had the biggest problem with these bits: some were quite graphic and moving, there was one description about a man's throat being cut by shrapnel, and as he panicked and fumbled at his throat, Walker remembers it as if he was a man adjusting a napkin that was falling from its place. Others felt a little over-the-top, corny, with flowers of blood bursting from men, and tank doors bowling down the road. At times they took me out of what is otherwise a slow and quiet novel about a man, the crumbly post-War Los Angeles and PTSD. A rewarding read. Extra points for the beautiful black-and-white photos of 50s LA with every new chapter.

The Long Take's Journey Into Noir
Review of the 2018 Canadian paperback edition from House of Anansi

Sometimes you have to extend the fiction writing in your own imagination in order to buy into the author's premise. I was thrown very early on in this poetry novel when it became apparent that the lead character Walker was a Canadian WWII veteran of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, called by their nickname the North Novas in the book. What I couldn't understand was why would Walker be receiving any benefits at all under the American G.I. Bill (pg. 45 "where to pick up his twenty bucks a week from the GI bill.") Otherwise the book seems immaculately researched, but that little tidbit was always in the back of my mind. Finally I just had to accept it as some sort of extension of the "Lend-Lease Act" where America is paying the veterans' benefits for other Allied nations and move on. Such are the quirks that will throw off some readers but will be completely ignored by others.

Otherwise this was a completely absorbing Dantesque descent into a noir world of post-war urban decay and gentrification primarily focussed on Los Angeles, but with some time spent in New York City and San Francisco. The veteran Walker, is shell-shocked (now we would call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder / PTSD) by his experiences of the Second World War, about which we learn only gradually in flashback italicized portions of the text. This is the real reason for the North Novas plot-tie in, as members of that regiment were specifically the victims of war crimes committed on POWs in the post-D-Day battles in Northern France. Walker, in his turn, committed some retaliatory atrocities and is haunted by the entire experience to the point where he cannot return to a youthful love in Nova Scotia but instead goes across America while living a somewhat hobo-like existence but also working as a journalist documenting the underclass of America.

There are some terrific cameo appearances by American noir film directors as Walker encounters them during live location film shoots and watches the end results on movie screens. It is such a constant refrain throughout the book that I became quite intrigued and had to look up the films that were referred to and even watch a few of them online.

Trivia and Links
Listing and Links of the noir films mentioned in the text that I could easily find. The YouTube versions may not be permanent or available to everyone but were working for me in Canada as of January 2019. There may be other trailers/videos available but I only trusted YouTube links. These are in order of appearance in The Long Take footnotes:

pg. 12 Ride the Pink Horse (1947) dir. Robert Montgomery.
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039768/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVcdFIWT6zA
Full film at (not found).

Pg. 12 Out of the Past (1947) dir. Jacques Tourneur.
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039689/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saurMhQHblc
Full film at (not found).

Pg. 28 Cry of the City (1948) dir. Robert Siodmak, based on the novel [b:The Chair for Martin Rome|8594635|The Chair for Martin Rome|Henry Edward Helseth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1281819199l/8594635._SY75_.jpg|13464316] by [a:Henry Edward Helseth|4122786|Henry Edward Helseth|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png].
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040257/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUt6ii3z4N0
Full film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovQNENXl5lM

Pg. 28 Brute Force (1947) dir. Jules Dassin
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039224/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMmmVBxKWCM
Full film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXhuaDhR4yk

Pg. 43 The Big Clock (1948) dir. John Farrow
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040160/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tqK08N_aQU
Full movie at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSQNDZ_FBaE (Pay per View)

Pg. 43 The Naked City (1948) dir. Jules Dassin
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040636/reference
Trailer at (not available)
Full movie at (not found).

pg. 70 Criss Cross (1949) dir. Robert Siodmak.
IMDb Listing at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041268/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCi2zPpI644
Full film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awlJBqZXLoI (Pay per View posting)

Pg. 163 & pg. 175 The Big Combo (1955) dir. Joseph H. Lewis.
IMDb Listing at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047878/reference
Not the trailer, but Opening Credits at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QShabLiL1lA
Full film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuWokTKOMWg

pg. 178 Kiss Me Deadly (1955) dir. Robert Aldritch, based on the novel [b:Kiss Me, Deadly|153626|Kiss Me, Deadly (Mike Hammer #6)|Mickey Spillane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1202972869l/153626._SY75_.jpg|148301] by [a:Mickey Spillane|50948|Mickey Spillane|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1318950096p2/50948.jpg].
IMDB Listing at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048261/reference
Trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss4AF91KOFw
Full film with subtitles at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HES8eEUaBL0

The war does not end when you come home. It lives on in memories of your fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who gave their lives. It endures in the wound that is slow to heal, the disability that isn't going away, the dream that wakes you at night, or the stiffening in your spine when a car backfires down the street.

I almost set this one down after 50 pages. “Innovative” is not always interesting.

Hands down the best book I have read from this year’s Booker nominees. Told in a riveting free verse format, it tackles so many things at once but never comes apart. The protagonist, a lost soul and noir antihero, arrives in Los Angeles haunted by his experiences in the war and ruing the loss of his idyllic home of Cape Breton, and the lost love left behind there, only to find a city rent by corruption and managed destruction and willfully ignorant of its suffering denizens. In the background, the swirling forces of film and jazz and politics serve as guiding forces as he reaches out to find connections that remain just out of reach. Filled with crackling language and vibrant imagery, this book may be the best thing I read this year.

The first novel-in-verse on the Man Booker shortlist (I think?) is worthy of the accolade. Robertson's poetry, qua poetry, has made little to no impression on me, although I read Hill of Doors a few years ago. But The Long Take uses free verse to capture not only a sense of fragmentation and loss, but also the rhythms of the mid-century American city, the trauma of war, and - perhaps most impressively - the techniques of noir filmmaking. Walker, Robertson's protagonist, is a Canadian D-Day veteran who cannot face going home: he has a girlfriend in the little fishing village from whence he came, but he can't imagine a world in which she deserves to be burdened with him. First in New York, then in LA and San Francisco, he finds work as a newspaper journalist, chronicling the growth of the cities (which, in LA, is synonymous with slum clearances and the building of highways) and the situation of the homeless men, many of them veterans, who clog the city streets. It's a tad inconclusive, or rather, the conclusion Robertson reaches is the result of a process that the free verse may obscure slightly: with more words, with more elaboration, we might feel we've been with Walker all the way, whereas the effect of The Long Take is rather more a series of vignettes. It might well read differently to someone who knows more about the history of noir. Worth a punt, though.

Very much out of my comfort zone - but extremely glad I read it. Very evocative.