GIVE + TAKE
Stona Fitch
Click here for Stona's author page.
Ross Clifton is a brilliant jazz pianist – and an even more talented thief. He steals millions of dollars in diamonds and BMWs and gives all the money away. But his life as a latter-day Robin Hood is about to come to an abrupt end. Fast, funny, and felonious, Give + Take takes you on an economic shakedown cruise.
Praise for Give + Take
'Give + Take is a smart and original novel that flies from beginning to end. An odd hybrid – part noir, part anti-capitalist screed – its voice is both seductive and addictive. A real discovery.'
– Richard Price, author of Lush Life
'A fresh, funny and deeply subversive novel from a writer with important things to say about our consumer culture.'
– Russell Banks, author of The Sweet Hereafter
'It is pure wicked fun, falling in with the players and scammers of Give + Take. Stona Fitch hits all the right notes in this sly, smart and driving book.'
– Jess Walter, Edgar Award-winning author of Citizen Vince and The Zero
'Wickedly funny, Give + Take is a virtuoso novel, one whose heart beats loudly and with its own beautifully idiosyncratic rhythms.'
– Megan Abbott, author of The Song Is You
'Give + Take is a brilliant concept and an equally brilliant novel. I loved it. Fitch writes about music and its performance with what I can only assume is an insider's knowledge. If he doesn't play piano himself I'll eat my hat. He also has an appealing off-kilter turn of phrase.'
– Scott Pack, The Friday Project
'Wickedly enjoyable. Fitch hits notes suspenseful, romantic, and hilarious.'
– Publishers Weekly
'Sharp and entertaining. An extended comic riff on double lives and fakery.'
– Kirkus Reviews
'Compulsively readable. Part entertaining road novel and part stylish crime caper.' – Booklist
'This is no simplistic anti-capitalist screed, but a novel that examines what it takes to get by in a world under economic siege, while questioning the ethics of the black economy, and considering where work ends and crime begins. Certainly, anyone who enjoyed the knife-edge quality of Fitch's earlier fiction, in particular the nerve-jangling Senseless, will want to read Give+Take. If you haven''t read Senseless, with its anti-globalist theme, you'll want to once you've finished this book. Both are intelligent crime novels with incisive social commentaries written by one of the best practitioners of the genre around.' Woody Haut. For the complete review, click here.
About Stona Fitch
Of Scottish-Cherokee ancestry, Stona Fitch lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts, where he leads the renegade Concord Free Press, the world’s first generosity-based publisher. His original, powerful and disturbing novels have been published in the UK, France, Germany, and the US, and have attracted an international following. His novel Senseless (published in the UK by Two Ravens Press) has been praised by J. M. Coetzee, Russell Banks, and others for anticipating violent anti-globalization protests, online hostage-taking, and other political developments; it is now an independent feature film. Printer’s Devil (2009) is also published by Two Ravens Press.
For more about the author see www.stonafitch.com; www.concordfreepress.com
An extract from Give + Take
I glide naked through the gray apartment, fakebook under my arm. Jan lies on the couch. She’s covered with a blanket. Hours together have left Jan asleep and me covered with her scent, as if I’d submerged myself in a pool of Jan. Every inch of me is redolent of her, except the inches that you might be thinking about. Those remain dry and un-Janned – conventional conquest is not part of my repertoire anymore.
Take a moment and look at your hands. Imagine that your fingers are ten penises of different lengths and purposes. They are always hard; no need for Viagra. They are remarkably flexible and strong, working for hours without getting sore or turning smaller. They do not impregnate.
Good hands are the most important sexual organ. You heard it here first.
I peer into a room with stuffed animals on the bed and drawings on the wall. Down the hall, a glowing laptop screen lights Jan’s office sickly blue. In the bedroom, I walk quickly to the dressing area, then pull a small metal kit from the hidden flap in the back of my fakebook. I take out a flashlight, flat as a credit card, click it on, and hold it between my teeth to guide me as I open each drawer with my knuckles. The top drawer is where people hide their pasts, tucked behind the socks and underwear.
Sure enough, there’s a small red rayon pouch waiting in the back, and inside, Jan’s gold wedding band and engagement ring. I twist a jeweler’s magnifier into my eye and check the fundamentals. The engagement ring’s diamond clocks in at close to two carats, cut in the round brilliant style, fifty-eight smooth facets all the way around. The color looks good, nice brilliance, no yellow or gray shading. Clarity is harder to check here in Jan’s dim, airless dressing area. All diamonds have blemishes, fractures of varying degrees from when they were formed deep in the earth. Inclusions are hard to see but unique – the diamond’s memory. Like Jan, her diamond has a few dark clouds, but nothing too terrible.
I open the metal kit and check the rows of boxes inside, glittering with stones of all shapes, sizes, and brightness. They’re the best synthetic diamonds available, purchased by Malcolm from rogue diamond Jews. I pick the budget twin of Jan’s diamond from its slot. Then I take out the reverse calipers and place them between the prongs of the setting. The steel ends in a soft bit of velvet, so they leave no mark as I apply a little pressure and Jan’s ill-fated marital stone – a conflict diamond if there ever was one – tumbles into my hand.
I tuck the diamond under my tongue, a trick I learned a few years ago when a popular but sleepless New York talk show host almost caught me holding a handful of old-mine diamonds from her rivière necklace. I pop the new stone in and give the setting a small squeeze with the calipers to close it. Then I polish the ring with a pair of Jan’s black silk underwear and put it back in its pouch.
I’m working very fast. The whole process of finding, stealing, and replacing the diamond takes less than a minute. Round, square, cushion-cut, new, old, large, small – I’ve handled more stones than a round-hatted Antwerp merchant.
Jan will probably never find out that her diamond is fake. Her untrained eye will never notice that her jewelry has experienced a major westward decimal shift tonight. If my nightwork is ever discovered, she’ll probably blame her ex-husband. Maybe Gwen will discover it forty years from now when she’s selling off Mom’s jewelry. If the switch is discovered, Jan’s homeowner’s policy will pay for it, and few have a soft spot in their hearts for the insurance industry.
The real criminals are the diamond cartel, which manages to convince people like Jan and her brutish ex-husband that they need a diamond the size of a chickpea, then carefully controls production and supply to keep its value high. Diamonds are as common as bricks. I’m working to clear the landscape of overvalued, culturally loaded consumer items. I’m extracting value from private property and releasing it like a genie from a bottle.
It starts here, late at night in a stranger’s apartment, when I search out the shine and fly away with it.
Weak light filters through the windows and tells me it’s time to go downstairs and catch a cab back downtown to my hotel. I gather my black suit from the living room floor and pull it on, smooth the wrinkles with my hands, then lean down to kiss Jan on the forehead. She stirs slightly and smiles. Maybe our brief time together has left her happier and less burdened. At least that’s what I hope as I click the door closed gently behind me and walk toward the elevator.
Yes, I steal. I make no apologies for it. Stealing is unimportant. But what you do with the money makes all the difference in the world.
We are grateful to the Scottish Arts Council for a grant towards the publication of Give + Take.
