Carter Clay: A Suspenseful and Psychologically Complex Tale of Guilt and the Frailty of Identity

by Elizabeth Evans

Drunk, and driving a van down a Florida highway, Carter Clay, a Vietnam vet at loose ends, irrevocably shatters the lives of the Altiz family, killing Joe and seriously injuring his wife, Katherine, and their daughter, Jersey, in a hit-and-run accident. Horrified, Clay seeks redemption, while still concealing his culpability, by becoming the questionable caretaker of the two survivors' damaged lives--eventually imposing upon them the baggage of his past and his haphazard faith in God. Suspenseful, psychologically complex, and inhabited by characters that will haunt your memory long after you have turned the last page, Carter Clay is a finely wrought tale of the frailty of identity and the possibility of redemption.

Genres: Contemporary, Fiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Elizabeth Evans was born, raised, and educated in Iowa. She attended Cornell College and the University of Iowa, where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Evans is the author of six books of fiction: As Good As Dead (March 2015), Rowing in Eden, Carter Clay, which was selected by the Los Angeles Times Book Review for the Best Books of 1999, and The Blue Hour, which the Washington Post Book World called "very much a Great American Novel." Her two short story collections are Suicide's Girlfriend and Locomotion. Recent stories appear in the journals Ploughshares and Cutthroat, and the collection xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths.

Evans is Professor Emeritus for the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, and frequently teaches for Queens University of Charlotte's Low-residence MFA Program in Creative Writing. She makes her home in Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

[Ronnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It must be possible--why not?--to die of misery. It should be possible." - Jersey Alitz, 13

Misery is probably the operative word. Unremitting misery. About halfway through, I kept being reminded of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, a book I haven't read in decades, with the thought that there was probably a good reason he decided to keep that story novella length because otherwise the hardships and heartache and relentless sadness start to have just a beat-down, pounding effect. But Evans was clearly not concerned about that. Her story, roughly thrice as long, moves doggedly from tragedy to nightmare with barely any respite at all. Meanwhile, the title character seriously seems to lose two or three IQ points by the chapter, and because there are 39 of them (not counting the prologue and epilogue), he well before the end is already resembling Steinbeck's Lennie Small in both size and cognitive capacity. Evans' use of the intrusive narrator is interesting, but because of this book's pervasive bleakness it felt like a relief to turn the final page.

First lines [Prologue]:
"This is before the accident. No one is dead yet."

[Amy Weintraub · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a model in character development and how to build tension in plot through character.

[Mia Muñoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the first drink that gets you drunk, Carter Clay.

[Molly Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't want this story to end. there wasn't a dull paragraph in it. blew me away. braVAAAA

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tale throws together an alcoholic Viet Nam vet, and three generations of women, MB, Katherine, and Jersey. It reads like a Greek tragedy; do not expect a happy ending. But the reader will definitely have to consider identity, how it is formed and perceived by self. I think Elizabeth Evans is such a good writer that I wil seek out her other books and have already read The Blue Hour and Rowing in Eden.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took a much different turn than I expected, but despite that, it was a pretty good book. It was about a family that got hit by a drunk driver. It was a hit and run, but the driver felt the need to make amends, so he becomes the caretaker of the brain damaged mother and the paraplegic daughter.

[Nancy Robson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story seemed like it should have worked but for some reason I could never get into it. I kept picking it up and reading for a day and then put it down for weeks. I tried to love this, but just couldn't.