This Is What We Do

by Tom Hansen, Lenore Zion (Foreword by)

Overview

"[This Is What We Do] is...Atlas Shrugged jammed in reverse and with the tires smoked. It's Ayn Rand for people with a brain. And a gun. It's a kick. Read it." --Sean Beaudoin, author of You Killed Wesley Payne and The Infects

James Nethery is at the end of his rope. Unable to find meaning in his comfortable life, he has cut himself off from everyone and fled to Paris. His mission; to rid himself of a lifetime of baggage, erase the past, and start over. He wanders Paris aimlessly until he meets Lily, a Ukrainian model and hooker. They form a unique bond, and together take the first steps toward writing new stories of their lives. Soon, Lily's past catches up with her and they are forced to go on the lam in a strange country. Together they must decide between justice and vengeance, and, when forced to take action, between what is too much--and not enough.

This Is What We Do is part neo-noir thriller, part love story, and part cautionary tale of the perils of trying to write a new life from nothing--and the stories that will be written for you by others if you find yourself in the public eye.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619029415
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tom Hansen was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. As a musician in the late 70's and early 80's, he was a pioneer in the punk rock scene in Seattle. Eventually, music gave way to heroin and he turned to dealing to support his habit. He got clean in 1999, returned to school and received an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2008. He published his first book, the memoir American Junkie, in 2010.

Read an Excerpt

Foreword

by Lenore Zion

There's this inane thing in the literary zeitgeist now; a sense that writers appear to have been brainwashed into believing that it is their moral responsibility to provide a comfortable, inclusive reading experience to any and all who open their books. This expectation that a novel should generate the sensation of being rocked to sleep by some sort of anesthetizing mother figure, singing you a soft lullaby, the lyrics of which are designed to personally flatter and validate as your protective mother figure shields you from facing the abrasive ghosts of reality that howl at the door.

Usually I am able to ignore this silliness, as it doesn't affect me personally in any significant way, and really, when something over which you have no control is irritating to you, you're an irresponsible asshole to keep staring at it until you become upset. But Tom Hansen's This Is What We Do contrasts so gloriously with this embarrassing trend in literature that it's impossible for me not to make a point of it.

It is fitting that Tom Hansen's female protagonist, Lily, is harshly Ukrainian. She was a model, and now she's a sex-worker—and you won't catch her crying about it, because Lily was never under the impression that this outcome wasn't the most likely scenario. The way Lily sees it, her physical beauty has always been her most easily exploited asset. She's not thrilled by this, but she's not so stupid that she won't use to her advantage a lucky characteristic that can effectively be employed as a cash machine.

Lily is my favorite example of what I find so exciting about Hansen's writing. She is, at once, a walking manifestation of the type of supernatural beauty standards by which less genetically blessed women feel crushed, and the aggressive reality of existing inside such a coveted female form. It's this eye for the contradictory nature of reality in Hansen's writing that engenders that low rumble of psychological discordance that I find appealing in a book. With this, Hansen offers a bona-fide, complex emotional reaction, delivered subtly through the reflection of an honest and unflattering piece of the human experience.

Hansen was very thoughtful and purposeful when he designed his characters, but he successfully avoided the narcissistic temptation of falling in love with his own creations. As is true of any meaningful relationship in real life, Hansen hates his characters as much as he loves them. The consequence of this decision is that his readers now also must struggle with their own complicated feelings toward Hansen's characters—but, from a writer to a reader, this is a gift. Rather than cushion us in a warm, fatty womb with easily-understood characters in an easily understood world, Hansen has given us the permission and the freedom to love, hate, and hate-love his characters, for whatever reasons are real to us. In assuming his readers can handle the brutal image of the world he writes for us, he offers us what so many writers now rob us of: respect.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for This Is What We Do

"A compelling, existential thrill ride." --Booklist

"A tight retro noir that's as equally comfortable channeling The Stranger as it is George V. Higgins. But there's also a sly anarchic subtext rumbling below the drugs-and-molls narrative, a welling need to bring plutocrat America to its knees. Where, of course, it belongs. This Is What We Do is a love story. Or, to be more accurate, it's a story that's in love with its own existential indifference. But it's also Atlas Shrugged jammed in reverse and with the tires smoked. It's Ayn Rand for people with a brain. And a gun. It's a kick. Read it." --Sean Beaudoin, author of You Killed Wesley Payne and The Infects

"Hansen's debut novel covers even wilder, trickier ground than his memoir, American Junkie. Anti-hero James Nethery seems an ordinary, lonely man drinking Coke at the bar, until he meets "Lily," a Ukrainian prostitute, and what began as a quiet, atmospheric meditation on down-and-out expats in Paris explodes into a nonstop, genre-blending noir-crime-vigilante-political-sexy-nihilistic-almost surreal thrill ride, infused in equal measures with brutality and beauty." --Gina Frangello, author of My Sister's Continent, Slut Lullabies, and A Life in Men

"There's what people say, and then there's what they do. The phrase will infect your consciousness, contorting and twisting itself around to take on more and more dimensions. What does it mean to act on our desires when one person's wish fulfillment means another's nightmare? What does it mean to be free, or to escape? At its core, This Is What We Do gives us two people left with nothing, cutting close to the uncoolness of loving without fear." --Grace Krilanovich, author of The Orange Eats Creeps

From the Publisher

Hansen's noirish debut novel charts recovering alcoholic James Nethery's curious role in stoking a global revolution. Wandering aimlessly in Paris, Nethery catches news that the Occupy-like People's Mafia has begun murdering bankers, leaving their slogan, "This is What We Do," scrawled near the corpses. He meets Lily, a Ukrainian former model turned prostitute, in a brothel and the two develop a primal attraction to one another. Nethery kills Claude Dutronc, Lily's cruel former modeling agent, when he discovers Claude and his minions viciously assaulting Lily after she tries to reclaim her passport. Nethery then muses, in heavy-handed omniscient narration, on the Camus-like clarity violence has brought to his life. The two flee to the idyllic shores of the Mediterranean with a duffel bag of serendipitously found cocaine, pursued by Claude's powerful friends as well as the French government, who think that Claude's murderer and the leader of the People's Mafia are one and the same. Hansen is dealing with interesting themes, yet his prose is clumsy and the initially exciting plot fizzles out in a dense but flaccid conclusion; the novel coming out, just as Nethery's first come on to Lily, like so many "half-baked cookies."
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