Forgiveness

by Jim Grimsley

"The Lifetime movie of my divorce and crime spree will be entitled Breakdown at Midnight.... Sympathy for my character will be established by my loss of a wildly respectable, lucrative job with Arthur Andersen, a company which turned out to be as crooked as its customers. I will be another orphan of the American Dream gone sour, and eventually I will give in to the so-called dark side of my nature when I strangle Carmine with the strap of her Prada bag, or stab her to death with a survivalist-quality knife, or bludgeon her skull to a bloody pulp with a classic Tiffany lamp; this part of the script will have to wait for the real event to unfold since, though I've decided that tomorrow will be the day I kill her, I have yet to choose how." —Charley Stranger Turning headline news into biting social satire, Jim Grimsley exposes the amorality of materialistic America in Forgiveness, a blackly comic tale of a bankrupt accounting executive who dreams of achieving stardom in the only way a pathetic failure can—by murdering his wife. As Charley Stranger imagines the crime, he fantasizes wildly unlikely encounters with celebrities—sharing marital woes with Nicole Kidman over a latte at Starbucks, being interviewed by Barbara Walters—while in real life his wife Carmine incessantly ridicules his inability to perform either in bed or in the marketplace. As Forgiveness veers to its shocking conclusion, it strips bare the corruption of the American Dream—the moral bankruptcy of corporate and political institutions, the hollowness of living in a media-saturated world, the delusion of buying love with luxury goods.

156 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

Jim Grimsley published a new novel in May of 2022, The Dove in the Belly, out from Levine Querido. The book is a look at the past when queer people lived more hidden lives than now. Grimsley was born in rural eastern North Carolina. He has published short stories and essays in various quarterlies, including DoubleTake, New Orleans Review, Carolina Quarterly, New Virginia Review, the LA Times, and the New York Times Book Review. Jim’s first novel Winter Birds, was published in the United States by Algonquin Books in the fall of 1994. Winter Birds won the Sue Kaufman Prize for best first novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. He has published other novels, including Dream Boy, Kirith Kirin, and My Drowning. His books are available in Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese. He has also published a collection of plays and most recently a memoir, How I Shed My Skin. His body of work as a prose writer and playwright was awarded the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005. For twenty years he taught writing at Emory University in Atlanta.

Reviews

[Sianeka · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a sad story of an ordinary life with our lead character leading a pathetic and mediocre existence. Jim Grimsley's prose is, as always, highly readable, and that's the best recommendation I can make for this story of a miserable loser and his fantasies of fame. No one in this story is even remotely likeable, and none of the "shocking twists" in the story are remarkable, for we don't even care one iota what becomes of these people.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intense view of the vitriol that surrounds a marriage after the husband loses his job. It was good/OK but I still don't know that I'd recommend it.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book, though a little twisted. I can relate to though having gone through a divorce and being unemployed.