Running the Light - Sam Tallent

''A thrilling, nauseating and painfully real depiction of what happens as youth, talent and charisma sour'' MEGAN NOLAN''Anyone wondering where The Great American Novel went: this is it on bail'' DBC PIERREDebauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living, in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn''t come - or worse - it comes and goes?In ''a majestically bleak, hilarious and bruising tour of regret, delusion and the detonation of the soul'' (Sam Lipsyte), Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man''s life as we search for the mercy he does not want.