The Man in My Basement
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Walter Mosley. (2005). The Man in My Basement. Unabridged Hachette Audio.

Walter Mosley. 2005. The Man in My Basement. Hachette Audio.

Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement. Hachette Audio, 2005.

Walter Mosley. The Man in My Basement. Unabridged Hachette Audio, 2005.

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1. • value: morality
2. • value: Book
3. • value: color
4. • value: african
5. • value: racial
6. • value: Justice
7. • value: people
8. • value: Fiction
9. • value: Thrillers
10. • value: American
11. • value: Identity
12. • value: relations
13. • value: suspense
14. • value: black
15. • value: mystery
16. • value: author
17. • value: Psychological
18. • value: race
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1. • role: Author
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2. • role: Narrator
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Little, Brown & Company

publishDate

2005-04-01T00:00:00-05:00

edition

Unabridged

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title

The Man in My Basement

fullDescription

This masterpiece by celebrated New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley is the mysterious story of a young Black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations.
The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. The stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to spend the summer in Charles's basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortgage payments. The money would be welcome. But Charles Blakey is black and Anniston Bennet is white, and it is clear that the stranger wants more than a basement view.
There is something deeper and darker about his request, and Charles does not need any more trouble. But financial necessity leaves him no choice. Once Anniston Bennet is installed in his basement, Charles is cast into a role he never dreamed of. Anniston has some very particular requests for his landlord, and try as he might, Charles cannot avoid being lured into Bennet's strange world. At first he resists, but soon he is tempted — tempted to understand a set of codes that has always eluded him, tempted by the opportunity to understand the secret ways of white folks.
Charles's summer with a man in his basement turns into an exploration of inconceivable worlds of power and manipulation, and unimagined realms of humanity. Walter Mosley pierces long-hidden veins of justice and morality with startling insight into the deepest mysteries of human nature.

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1. • value: Grade 3

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content: Charles Blakey has fallen on hard times. Out of work, heavily in debt, drinking too much, Blakey, a black man, worries about holding on to his family home in Sag Harbor. When a strange white man offers him $50,000 to rent his basement for the summer, Blakey can't refuse. What's the catch? Anniston Bennet wants to be imprisoned for the duration of his stay. Ernie Hudson's performance turns Blakey's dilemma into an exploration of perversity, punishment, repentance, and redemption. His accomplished handling of the exchanges between the two men resonates with truth. Hudson is compelling as Blakey wrestles with the seductiveness of power. In a departure from his popular Easy Rawlins mysteries, Walter Mosley presents a fascinating, if disturbing, look into the human soul. S.J.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award 2005 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 15, 2003
     Even in his genre fiction, which includes mysteries (the Easy Rawlins, Fearless Jones and Socrates Fortlaw series) and SF (Blue Light
     , etc.), Mosley has not been content simply to spin an engrossing action story but has sought to explore larger themes as well. In this stand-alone literary tale, themes are in the forefront as Mosley abandons action in favor of a volatile, sometimes unspoken dialogue between Charles Blakey and Anniston Bennet. Blakey, descended from a line of free blacks reaching back into 17th-century America, lives alone in the big family house in Sag Harbor. Bennet is a mysterious white man who approaches Blakey with a strange proposition—to be locked up in Blakey's basement—that Blakey comes to accept only reluctantly and with reservations. The magnitude of Bennet's wealth, power and influence becomes apparent gradually, and his quest for punishment and, perhaps, redemption, proves unsettling—to the reader as well as to Blakey, who finds himself trying to understand Bennet as well as trying to recast his own relatively purposeless life. The shifting power relationship between Bennet and Blakey works nicely, and it is fitting that Blakey's thoughts find expression more in physicality than in contemplation; his involvements with earthy, sensual Bethany and racially proud, sophisticated and educated Narciss reflect differing possibilities. The novel, written in adorned prose that allows the ideas to breathe, will hold readers rapt; it is Mosley's most philosophical novel to date, as he explores guilt, punishment, responsibility and redemption as individual and as social constructs. While it will be difficult for this novel to achieve the kind of audience Mosley's genre fiction does, the author again demonstrates his superior ability to tackle virtually any prose form, and he is to be applauded for creating a rarity, an engaging novel of ideas.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     September 15, 2003
     Not a mystery: cashed-strapped Charles Blakey really goofs when he rents out his basement to a stranger.

     Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 15, 2003
     Charles Blakey is an unemployed black man, deep in debt, who drinks too much, has few friends, is awkward with women, and lives alone in a large house where the basement is filled with artifacts of his family's rich history. As in many of Mosley's books, the story begins with a knock on the door: Anniston Bennet, a wealthy white man with mysterious motives, wants to rent Blakey's sizable basement. But while there is mystery here, this is no hunt for a criminal as in Mosley's famous Easy Rawlins series. Instead, an inventive premise lays the groundwork for a philosophical debate. Bennet wants Blakey to hold him prisoner for 65 days, his way of atoning for "crimes against humanity." Blakey is extremely reluctant, but the "rent" is considerable and his options are dwindling, so he agrees. At first, he's afraid of his voluntary prisoner, but the balance of power begins shifting unpredictably as the two men engage in heated question-and-answer sessions. In a way, Blakey finds his connection to his family and to the world as he explores relationships between the powerful and the disempowered, between world-changing evil and peaceful apathy. And when Bennet asks, "You think that you can have the easy life of TV and gasoline without someone suffering and dying somewhere?" the book's timeliness is irrevocably established. This is fine, provocative writing from the prolific Mosley, whose gifts extend well beyond his excellent mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from December 1, 2003
     "No one can save anyone, not even themselves," insists Anniston Bennet, the antagonist of this most unusual novel. Bennet is serving a self-induced, 65-day prison sentence in a homemade cell in the basement of protagonist Charles Blakey, a stranger to whom he pays a hefty $48,750 to provide the space plus food and books. The white, 57-year-old Bennett and the black, 33-year-old Blakey seemingly couldn't be more different, but as their stories unfurl, the reader will see that the men are in some ways similar. Bennet's self-imprisonment is an act of penance to absolve himself of his horrendous deeds, including killing and abetting corporations in raping impoverished countries for their natural resources. Blakey is a liar and thief who, through inaction, has hastened the death of an elderly uncle. Both characters are trying to escape their pasts, Bennett by incarcerating himself and Blakey by literally selling off historic family heirlooms. Yet in the end the past cannot be restrained. Mosley fans expecting a mystery might be disappointed, but this thought-provoking novel will satisfy those with literary tastes. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/03.]-Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

     Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2003
     Mosley momentarily leaves behind Easy Rawlins for this tale of psychological suspense, featuring a hapless young man who rents out his basement when he's hard up for cash-and comes to regret it.

     Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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This masterpiece by celebrated New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley is the mysterious story of a young Black man who agrees to an unusual bargain to save the home that has belonged to his family for generations.
The man at Charles Blakey's door has a proposition almost too strange for words. The stranger offers him $50,000 in cash to spend the summer in Charles's basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortgage payments. The money would be welcome. But Charles Blakey is black and Anniston Bennet is white, and it is clear that the stranger wants more than a basement view.
There is something deeper and darker about his request, and Charles does not need any more trouble. But financial necessity leaves him no choice. Once Anniston Bennet is installed in his basement, Charles is cast into a role he never dreamed...

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   • value: Best Audiobooks
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   • value: Audie Award Nominee

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   • description: Fiction / Literary
2. • code: FIC030000
   • description: Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
3. • code: FIC049050
   • description: Fiction / African American & Black / Mystery & Detective