The Turnaround

by George P. Pelecanos

Paperback, 2009

Call number

MYST PEL

Collection

Genres

Publication

Back Bay Books (2009), Edition: Reprint, 294 pages

Description

Thirty-five years after a devastating accident that irrevocably shapes the lives of six people, a pair of redemption-seeking survivors reaches out to one another in an effort that is compromised by a fellow survivor's release from prison.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Darcia
I'm torn on how to rate this one. On writing alone, Pelecanos is a 5+. He instantly breathes life into his characters. The dialogue has a perfect rhythm and sounds real. He brings more than entertainment, by tackling a difficult topic and never shying away from the dirt within.

What I had a problem
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with was the volume of characters and the constant game of leapfrog from one to another. Because there were so many characters, as a reader I was never able to truly latch on to one and invest completely in that person's story. The characters all eventually connected, their lives interweaving in both the past and the present. But the jump in time, combined with the number of characters involved, for me, took away that emotional investment I like to have in a story.
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LibraryThing member shazjhb
Good light read. No surprises.
LibraryThing member BraveKelso
This is a good novel. It does not involve the author's established serial characters. There are crimes and there are mysteries about the crimes, but it is largely a character driven novel about living with grace and decency and carrying the burden of wounds and grievances.
LibraryThing member franoscar
(possible spoiler)
I liked this book mostly. I don't like to be led to root for somebody to be killed, which I did...it's like, Yay vicious hitmen! The characters were mostly very human, and had goodness in them so it is uplifting but you believe it could be true.
LibraryThing member miriamparker
This is THE book. I have always been a fan of George Pelecanos' but this is the book that people are not going to be able to stop talking about. It's more a story about a neighborhood and people dealing with the mistakes in their pasts than a crime novel. Great writing, amazing setting. This is a
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book that everyone will love.
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LibraryThing member nbmars
George Pelecanos’s books are populated by denizens of slum housing, drug dens, and inner city street corners. Their stories can seem harsh and jarring, but they can also be ironically moving. The Turnaround is a departure from the author's previous formula involving police or private detectives.
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But it is similar in its strong local flavor (D.C. and its suburbs), in its startling evocation of the underclasses, and its mix of hope and despair.

The book begins in 1972, when three white boys, Billy, Pete, and Alex, high on beer and pot, go looking for trouble in a black neighborhood. They find it soon enough, but their attempted escape is stymied by an unanticipated dead end, or turnaround, at the end of the street.

The story picks up with the survivors thirty-five years later. Like his other books, we become enmeshed in a world of drugs and violence. But this book has an additional dimension: aging, and the changes it brings.

One of the black boys who had been there that day, Raymond Monroe, is now working at the VA Center at Walter Reed Hospital. Raymond works as a physical therapist, helping the veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have returned home in pieces. He admonishes one depressed veteran to get out and speak to the community, but the veteran demurs, saying “I’m not proud of everything I did.” Monroe answers him:

“Neither am I. … Look, Sergeant. You’re gonna realize something as you get older. Hopefully it’ll come to you quicker than it did to me. Life is long. Who you are now, the things you did, how you’re feeling, like your world is never gonna be as good as it was? None of that is going to matter as you move along. It only will if you let it. I’m not the person I was when I was young. … Let’s just say I had to walk a whole lotta miles to learn how much I’ve changed. Whatever you did before doesn’t matter. What matters now is how you make the turnaround. You’re gonna be all right.”

This book is all about turnarounds, and deadends. And fathers and sons, and understanding the causes of hate and violence. Some in this book are saved, and some are damned. And Pelecanos makes you care about all of them. He’s a darn good writer.
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LibraryThing member bridget3420
The Turnaround is the story of six teens whose lives are altered by one statement. Three bored D.C. teenagers decide to drive into unknown territory. Drunk, high and stupid, the passenger, Pete, uses a racial slur directed at three other teens on the sidewalk. When they try unsuccessfully to leave
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the area, Pete jumps out of the car and takes off. The driver, Billy gets out of the car and tries to reason with the 3 teens. Alex was just in the wrong car at the wrong time. Billy is shot and Alex has to go through 2 facial reconstruction surgeries. The other teens are Raymond and James, who are brothers. Charles is among the worst of bad influences.

Years later, their paths cross again. Can they forgive and forget and get past the awful incident? Or will they let it haunt them until they die?

This was a very good book! I can't wait to read another George Pelecano book. His writing style was very easy to get into. The only problem I had was keeping all the names straight. There are a lot of people in this book. I would highly recommend this one.
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LibraryThing member bermudaonion
In the 1970’s, three teen-age white boys - Billy, Pete and Alex – were out drinking, smoking pot and cruising. They drove into a black neighborhood, pulled up alongside three teen-aged black boys – Raymond, James and Charles - rolled down the window, threw a Hostess cherry pie at one the
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young men and yelled a racial epithet. When the white boys sped off, they discovered the street ended in a turnaround; when they returned the black youths were waiting for them. One boy, Pete, jumped out of the car and ran off; the rest were involved in “the incident” that left Billy, the driver of the car, dead and Alex wounded.

Thirty years later, Alex is running his father’s coffee shop and mourning the death of his younger son in Iraq. Pete is a hugely successful lawyer. James seems to have straightened himself out after years in prison and is working as an auto mechanic. Raymond is a physical therapist, working with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital. Charles has been in and out of trouble and still seems to think the world owes him something.

After a chance encounter at Walter Reed, Alex and Raymond get together to talk and to try to make amends. Alex makes a startling discovery about “the incident,” and decides it’s time to make some changes in his life.

The title of The Turnaround by George Pelecanos is perfect – it signifies the turnaround involved in “the incident” and the turnaround most of the characters make in their lives. I really enjoyed this book and was engrossed in it and its characters from start to finish. The character development in this crime novel is fantastic. I empathized with most of the characters and wanted them to make good decisions. George Pelecanos has decided to include some social issues in his books and he includes the war and our treatment of veterans in this one, which I found fascinating too. The Turnaround has some graphic moments and foul language, but I thought they were both suitable for the nature of the novel.
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
“The Turnaround,” set deep in the heart of Washington D.C., is the story of six teenage boys, three of them white and three of them black, who have their lives forever changed on what should be just another day in the summer of 1972. Alex Pappas knows that he and his two friends, Billy Cachoris
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and Pete Whitten, have no business going into a black neighborhood looking for trouble but he cannot force himself to say the words that might stop Billy from driving them there.

After the three very briefly confront three black boys roughly their own age, Billy races them away in his father’s car only to find a turnaround barrier at the end of the street from which he had planned to escape the area. Still hoping to get away cleanly, Billy turns the car around but finds his only escape route blocked by the three neighborhood boys he is fleeing. In just a matter of seconds, one of the three white boys is shot dead and another is badly beaten and scarred for life. Two of the young black men are sentenced to long prison sentences a few weeks later and Alex Pappas begins the long process of putting his life back together.

Flash forward to 2007 and Alex is running the same family diner he worked in as a boy. He is a happily married man with one surviving son but is still deeply grieving the recent loss of his other son in Iraq. Every time he looks in a mirror Alex is reminded of “the incident,” as he calls it, so when a chance encounter at Walter Reed Hospital leads to contact with one of the black men involved in it, Alex agrees to meet with him to discuss their shared past.

“The Turnaround” is a novel about redemption and second chances, a character-driven story about six young men who randomly cross paths just long enough to make the biggest mistake of all their young lives. One of them paid the ultimate price and did not survive that day, two went to prison, and three of them had to pick up the emotional pieces and get on with their lives as best they could. Over all, “The Turnaround” is an inspirational story about personal loyalty, family ties, friendship and the mellowness and peace that sometimes come with age.

The novel does verge on over sentimentality at times, especially as regards its improbable sugar-sweet ending, but the level of brutality and violence exhibited by some characters saves it from reading more like a fairy tale than a crime thriller. As usual, Pelecanos has filled his novel with memorable characters, not the least of which is the city of Washington D.C. itself. Reading a George Pelecanos novel is almost like walking the streets of Washington D.C. at night – not, having now read Pelecanos on several occasions, something I am ever likely to do again.

Rated at: 3.5
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LibraryThing member johnbsheridan
A book that was a pleasure to read as it just oozed class. The portrayal of intergenerational relationships and the attendant pride and emotion that a father and son have for each other was beautifully represented and brought an emotional edge to this book as I recalled my own father and thought of
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my son. The story itself was relatively simple and perhaps the final conclusion was a little predictable as you could see it coming but given that I had tired of Pelecanos slightly during the Derek Strange books this brought me back to when I first discovered him and the Nick Stefanos books. Not as strong as The Night Gardener which I thought was phenomenal but still....
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LibraryThing member grigoro
Loved this book. Love Pelecanos. Gripping, realistic, great writing, great story about fathers and sons.
LibraryThing member dougwood57
'The Turnaround' is based on an actual event that occurred in the Washington DC area in the summer of 1972. Three white kids out partying take a turn down a road into a small black enclave looking for a little trouble. They tossed a firecracker into a crowd in front of a grocery store - and then
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sped off only to learn that the road was a dead end. One guy successfully skedaddled. One guy got shot and one guy was badly beaten.

Pelecanos takes this event and his characters' later fortunes as the focal point of his latest novel. He revisits these actors some 36 years later and creates a fascinating look at how their lives have gone since 'the incident'. His examination takes the reader into some of the seedier parts of life in DC, but also takes a look at the blue-collar world of black and white characters. Pelecanos also explores the human costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq partially through two characters' rehab work at Walter Reed. Pelecanos creates real characters that I cared about - both good and bad.

'The Turnaround' is all the things you expect from George Pelecanos: drug crime, violence, gritty, hard-boiled, and all that, but there is also an uplifting element to the story that suggests better possibilities exist. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member stang50logan
Book started off pretty slow and almost mixed too any charachters but it made a strong comeback and ended pretty well. Good story about people having a second chance in life.
LibraryThing member burnit99
This is a tale of growth and redemption that follows a group of people whose lives cross in 1972, when a trio of bored teens decides to venture into the other side of town and lay on some racial taunts. The resulting violence leaves one dead, two imprisoned and one disfigured. The story then jumps
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to present day, when the lives of these people intersect again, and we see how the same events can bring about growth and maturity in some, and stagnation and thirst for vengeance in another. This is a fairly compelling story, but the writing style is less so. Points for making the reader care about the characters and taking pleasure in their growth, compassion and forgiveness.
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LibraryThing member whiteriot
As always with GP this is a really good read. Believable characters, believable life stories and (what seems for a non American) pitch perfect dialogue. The author has said that much of the inspiration for this came from his own background and it shines through. My only criticism would be that the
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story is a little too happy by the end and most of the loose ends get tied up in a way that doesn't happen in real life. But I'm nit picking, after all the book is called The Turnaround and is about how people can turn their lives around.
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LibraryThing member blockbuster1994
The Turnaround showcases what a fine writing talent George Pelecanos truly is. Nothing about this story normally appeals to me: young urban men coming of age, who share a love of music, cars, dope and to some extent-- professional basketball and are connected tangentially by a common violent crime.
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Yet, Pelecanos writes with such truthfulness for the situation of life, I found myself lost within his story, eager to learn the fate of the central characters.

There are no real heros in this novel (except for the war veterans characters that occassionally walk randomly through a scene, who possess such dignitity despite their sacrifice and loss). Rather, it is a story about life experiences; how people are shaped by their economic situation, family upbringing and environmental influences.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a story rich in character development.
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LibraryThing member honoliipali
The dust jacket of this book makes it seem that this is meant to be a feel good chick lit story. I didn't find the story to fulfill that until the ending. However, the storyline is well written and flows well. The character development does draw you in and I did feel their presence. Overall I found
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this book to be a worthwhile read.
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LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
I've grown to really appreciate the crime writing of George Pelecanos. It's not only that he name drops places in the Maryland suburbs of DC and streets within the District of Columbia, but also that he knows and feels so comfortable writing about black-white relationships in the DC Metro area. He
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sees both the good and bad in all of his characters. This book was a real treat to read despite the fact that it was about a bad situation.

Years ago, three white kids decided to ride into a black enclave called Heathrow Heights to taunt three young black men who happened to be there at the time. A pie in face of a black kid ended with a white runaway, a white eye injury, and a white death. Years later this scene is revisited as we meet the characters (with the exception of the dead man) who were involved. Alex Pappas, the son of the store owner has taken over his dad's store. Charlie Baker, after having served prison time becomes determined to extort money from those who put him there in the first place. As they grow older, the Monroe brothers try to piece together their lives, James as a mechanic and the younger Raymond as a physical therapist at Walter Reed National Medical Center,

Interesting and believable characters make this story flow well. If you get the CD version, you'll love how Dion Graham does the dialogue - especially the "bad guys". For one who never read much crime fiction in the past, I'm finding that Pelecanos' writing is surely going to change that!
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LibraryThing member BillPilgrim
In D.C., 37 years ago, three white teens/young men drive into a black neighborhood and harass and yell the N word at a group of black teenagers/young men from their car. The end result is that one of the whites is shot to death and another ends up with a damaged eye, leaving a permanent droopiness
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and scar. The other white ran away without injury. Two of the blacks went to jail; one ended up serving 20 years because of an added sentence from inside; the other served a year because he made a deal; the third, younger brother to the one who served 20, did not get convicted.
Now, the two surviving whites are about to be extorted by the black guy who served the year; he is still an active criminal involved in pot sales with two young men. The brother who got off happens upon one of the white guys just before this happens and approaches him to try to reach some sort of understanding.
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LibraryThing member blackhornet
Pelecanos is Philip Roth in genre form: same concerns with masculinity and the decline of white, working class areas founded on solid immigrant values. Only because his work is genre based, it lacks the sophistication of Roth, both in terms of language and content. So while this is a very
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satisfying read, with solid human values triumphing over bad, it's never going to make you look at the world afresh. Affirming rather than transforming, then, but enjoyable and well-crafted nonetheless.
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LibraryThing member BibliophileBubba
George Pelecanos is one of the best crime writers working today. And his work has long transcended the traditional constraints of the genre and displayed real literary quality. This most-recent of his books is clearly the most ambitious, the most consciously beyond-genre book he's written, and it's
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really very successful. Although there's a crime at the center of the story, there's no police procedure, very little in the way of investigation, and next to no suspense involved at all. I for one saw almost immediately the dramatic secret he only officially reveals in the last 20 pages. But the book is not really about those things at all, so there's no real effect of their absence except for the diehard crime proceduralist. The book is about fathers and sons, the legacy of crime and wrongdoing, and the possibility and power of redemption. It's a great read.
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LibraryThing member DaveWilde
“The Turnaround” is a 2008 novel by George Pelecanos. On the surface, it bears quite a few similarities to his earlier novel, “Hard Revolution.” As in “Hard Revolution,” the book is about two different eras, beginning with two groups of teenagers in the sixties, one group Black, one
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group White, and an incident that tears their lives apart, some ending up wounded or dead, some ending up in prison, and some running away from their past. The book then picks up these different groups thirty years later, some of the teenagers have become successful as professionals or small businessmen and some have let the system tear them up. They are all scarred by their past, some literally and some deep in their souls. Their paths cross again, some of them for the better, but some for worse. They bear guilt and anxiety for what happened and their roles in it. Where they just dumb kids acting out or something worse? Can they forgive each other for what happened? Can they move on from it finally? What do they owe each other for what happened? Is that debt payable in blood or money?

Pelecanos writes classics that are not just crime novels, but are great character studies and he takes the reader on a journey to different eras, framing and establishing those eras by the cars the men drive and the music they listen to on the radio. There is a driving beat for each era and Pelecanos finds it. Like most of his books, “The Turnaround” takes place in the neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Few of us living outside the district think about it as a city outside the political world of the white house and the capitol building, but it is a thriving city filled with neighborhoods and history and people and Pelecanos brings that all to life in this book.
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Awards

Hammett Prize (Nominee — 2008)

Pages

294

ISBN

0316040924 / 9780316040921
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