Tom Cooper (1)

Gleich zu Beginn muss ich erst mal das leidige Thema BUCHTITEL ansprechen. Denn weder erwartet einen bei dieser Lektüre die tragische Lebensgeschichte des Wes Trench noch ist dessen Leben zerstört (zumindest habe ich es so empfunden). Doch auch den Originaltitel finde ich eher seltsam: The Marauders (= Plünderer, nicht Rumtreiber wie ich irgendwo gelesen habe). Denn gerade das sind die Protagonisten dieses Buches nicht. Ist es zuviel verlangt, sich einen Titel zu wünschen der im show more richtigen Zusammenhang mit dem Inhalt steht?
Erzählt wird das Leben von acht Männern (Frauen scheint es kaum mehr zu geben) während des Sommers 2010, kurz nachdem die Ölplattform Deepwater Horizon explodierte und fünf Jahre nach dem Hurrikan Katarina. Sie alle leben im tiefen Süden von Louisiana, wo die Menschen Sumpfratten genannt werden und die meisten nach diesen beiden Schicksalsschlägen hart um ihre Existenz kämpfen müssen. Da ist Fischer Lindqvist, der wie die meisten Anderen mehr schlecht als recht von der Shrimpsfischerei versucht zu leben und seinen Kindheitstraum nie aufgegeben hat, einen Goldschatz zu finden. Die Zwillinge Toup, die auf einer Insel mitten im Sumpf Marihuana anbauen. Brady Grimes, der widerwillig in die Heimat zurückgekehrt ist und nun im Auftrag der Ölgesellschaft die Einheimischen über den Tisch zieht. Cosgrove und Hanson, zwei Männer, die nichts miteinander verbindet außer dem Wunsch, möglichst schnell an viel Geld zu kommen. Und natürlich Wes Trench, der gemeinsam mit seinem Vater ebenfalls auf Shrimpsfang geht.
Tom Cooper gelingt es bei seinem Erstlingswerk überraschend gut, die besondere Stimmung und Atmosphäre dieser Gegend und seiner Bewohner zu vermitteln. Es ist ein zäher und eigensinniger Menschenschlag der hier ausharrt und versucht, trotz der widrigen Umstände die auch ganz ohne Hurrikan und Ölpest zum Alltag gehören, sich und ihren Familien ein möglichst gutes Leben zu ermöglichen. Aber es sind nicht nur gute Geschichten, die Cooper hier erzählt anhand der teils schrägen Hauptfiguren, von denen jeweils abwechselnd kapitelweise berichtet wird. Die realen Ereignisse wie der Hurrikan Katarina und die Ölpest scheinen zwar nur eine Nebenrolle zu spielen, doch letzten Endes sind sie es, die die Ursachen für die massiven Schwierigkeiten dieses Landstriches darstellen. Die Zerstörung der ganzen Umgebung wie auch der Tod vieler Menschen durch Katarina, die Umweltverschmutzung durch die Ölpest, der dadurch erfolgte Zusammenbruch der gesamten Lebensgrundlagen der Einheimischen (Shrimps werden nun aus China importiert), das Davonstehlen der dafür Verantwortlichen - der Autor klagt nicht an, sondern schildert es eher beiläufig. Doch es ist auf jeder Seite präsent.
Tom Cooper ist ein toller Geschichtenerzähler und so sei es ihm verziehen, dass das Ende fast schon zu happyendmäßig ausfällt. Ihm ist ein überzeugender Roman mit schrägen, aber real wirkenden Menschen gelungen, der Ereignisse und insbesondere deren Folgen zurück ins Gedächtnis ruft, die von Vielen vermutlich bereits wieder vergessen wurden. show less

I received a copy of Tom Cooper's fictional novel, The Marauders compliments of LibraryThing Early Reviewer's Program and appreciated the opportunity. I will start by stating that I loved this book and the author's writing! The bayou is full of history, mystery and myth...and this story encompasses it all. The author's descriptions of the setting were so intense that I felt that I was in the heart and heat of it all. The characters were all unique and represented the South in a true to life show more experience. The story line regarding the aggressive oil company versus the vulnerable "little" people was a disturbing and realistic portrayal, reflecting the importance of protecting our environment. Mix in the hunt for treasure, the challenge of earning a simple living, drug dealing criminals and a tangled web of relationships and you have got a story! For a debut novel, I am left impressed and wanting more! show less

Stephen King blurbed The Marauders, calling it “A little Elmore Leonard and a little Charles Portis”. I would have said “a little William Faulkner and a little James Lee Burke”, but you get the idea----Tom Cooper has built on some pretty substantial fictional foundations, and created " one hell of a novel" (King again). There are multiple viewpoints, and intersecting story lines here--a combination that I’m always happy to sport with. A BP landsman, originally from the bayou, Barry show more Grimes hates the Barataria---the heat, the insects, the smell, even the people---and doesn’t want to be there. He was sent to persuade landowners, including his own mother, to accept the oil company’s “generous offers” of compensation, and to sign away their rights to make claims against the oil company for damages resulting from the catastrophic oil spill that has ruined local shrimping and fishing for the foreseeable future. A troubled teenaged boy is searching for a way to deal with his ambiguous feelings about his father, and the loss of his mother during Hurricane Katrina. The Toup brothers, as nasty a pair of swamp rats as you’re likely to encounter anywhere, have a bumper crop of fine, fine weed growing on a chenier out on the salt, and a lot of people would love to know where it is. A hapless pair of petty criminals who think they are looking for something else entirely, stumble onto this crop, unaware of the pickle they’ve put themselves in… Naturally, all these threads end up tangling together, and the unraveling is well worth reading. Cooper has the lingo, the swampy ambience and the low-down noir feeling of Cajun country down pat. He'd get a full star from me for that alone, when so many authors try and fail to reproduce that unique setting. And he's capable of injecting bloody dark humor into his gothic tale. That's another star before we even look at the story line. This is a good one, and I hope Tom Cooper writes a few more like this. show less

The Marauders sets it readers down in the backwater bayou town of Jeanette, LA in the wake of the duel tragedies of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The town lives off of its shrimping industry, but the shrimp are too small and hard to find, not to mention likely tainted by the oil washing up on Jeanette's shores. Jeanette, at first glimpse, is home to a pack of the most unlikeable characters you're likely to find in fiction. First, there are the twin Toup brothers, who beat back the show more steadily encroaching poverty with a bumper crop of marijuana they're growing on a hidden bayou island. Then there is Gus Lindquist, a one-armed especially down on his luck shrimper with a painkiller addiction who is certain that if he just tries long and hard enough he'll find the lost treasure of the pirate Jean Lafitte. Then there's young Wes Trench, whose family has seen tragedy and whose relationship with his shrimp boat captain father is desperately on the rocks. There's Cosgrove and Hanson, too, a couple of petty criminals on the hunt for a treasure of their own. Last but not least is Brady Grimes, a guy who fled his Jeanette home at the first opportunity only to find himself returned to his hometown to wheedle the locals into accepting paltry settlements from BP for their troubles.

The Marauders is a fairly fast paced tale of a crowd of characters whose paths cross at the most inopportune moments. Black humor litters Cooper's story of the foibles of hapless Lindquist, as he desperately hunts the treasure that will turn his fortune around but ends up tangled in the Toup brothers' web instead. Cosgrove gets into a bar fight after burying his father that spins his life off in an unexpected direction. Wes Trench and his father part ways after a squabble over ice that is the culmination of months of quiet hostility after the death of Wes's mother, and all of the sudden Wes is thrust into nutty Lindquist's orbit that is headed straight for danger. Brady Grimes, in all his smooth talking, mildly conflicted glory ties the community together with his decidedly unwelcome visits, until even he is taken down a peg by the struggles of his old hometown.

I say that the characters are unlikeable at first glimpse, because they don't all stay that way. Sure, maybe the marijauna farming Toup brothers don't have a ton of redeeming qualities. However, by the time readers have spent a couple hundred pages in their presence, most of Cooper's other characters emerge with a few more dimensions than you might expect, and then you, like me, might realize that you're not reading just a ridiculous crime caper about a bunch of greedy fools so much as you are reading a terribly honest and, at last gasp, affecting story of a proud, stubborn, if sometimes desperate, Cajun community that gets back up again as many times as it gets knocked down. The Marauders is the last book that I would have expected to get an emotional reaction out of me as it wound down into its final pages, but let me assure you, somehow it did, and for that reason alone, you can expect The Marauders to be a book that is much more than meets the eye. show less