August
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
A boy coming of age in a part of the country that’s being left behind is at the heart of this dazzling novel—the first by an award-winning author of short stories that evoke the American West.
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A boy coming of age in a part of the country that’s being left behind is at the heart of this dazzling novel—the first by an award-winning author of short stories that evoke the American West.LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “August reads like early Hemingway, retooled for the present.”—William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days
Callan Wink has been compared to masters like Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane. His short stories have been published in The New Yorker and have won numerous accolades. Now his enormous talents are showcased in a debut novel that follows a boy growing up in the middle of the country through those difficult years between childhood and adulthood.
August is an average twelve-year-old. He likes dogs and fishing and doesn’t mind early-morning chores on his family’s Michigan dairy farm. But following his parents’ messy divorce, his mother decides that she and August need to start over in a new town. There, he tries to be an average teen—playing football and doing homework—but when his role in a shocking act of violence throws him off course once more, he flees to a ranch in rural Montana, where he learns that even the smallest communities have dark secrets.
Covering August's adolescence, from age twelve to nineteen, this gorgeously written novel bears witness to the joys and traumas that irrevocably shape us all. Filled with unforgettable characters and stunning natural landscapes, this book is a moving and provocative look at growing up in the American heartland.
Lese-Probe zu „August “
August s first, fully accessible memory was of the barn. Riding on his father s shoulders down the hill behind the house, he could see the building ahead of them, its peaked roof and the long, low addition off to the side, faded red with white trim. His father ducking under the door so he wouldn t hit his head, the dull murmur of the milk pump, the cows chewing in the stanchions. Maybe five or six, he was too old to be riding on his father s shoulders, and he didn t want to be there. As soon as he could, he squirmed down and climbed to the haymow. The rungs of the ladder were almost too far spaced, but his father was there at his back in case he slipped.In the haymow, dusty and dark and warm, his father broke up two bales to make a soft pile, and they had several wrestling matches during which August got repeatedly tossed into the loose hay, a situation he loved more than just about anything. After a time they descended the ladder, and August s father removed and sanitized the milkers while August went around patting each Holstein on the nose. When the milking was done, August helped his father dip the teats of several cows until August dropped the applicator and spilled the iodine solution and his father sat him in the milk room with a mason jar filled fresh from the refrigerator vat to keep him occupied while he finished the chores alone. The milk was full-fat, thick and heavy, cold enough to fog the glass. There was the smell of the cows and straw. The milk room was whitewashed, cobwebs in the old wooden crossbeams, the stainless vat spotless and gleaming. He held the mason jar with both hands, drinking, the milk running down his chin.
Eventually his father came and scooped him up. The cows had been put out to pasture, and the barn was silent. He rode on his father s shoulders back to the house, tired and not protesting now. His mother was at the kitchen table, a dim gray haze of smoke above her head. She had books scattered around her, glasses
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on, taking notes. He crawled up on her lap and she wrinkled her nose, removing some papers from under one of his grubby hands. The sound of the TV being switched on came from the other room, his father opening a beer.
She closed her books and put them into her backpack. Looks like study hall is over, she said. Thanks, Dad. Let s get you to the bath.
August was twelve and there were cats in the barn. Litters begetting litters begetting litters some thin and misshapen with the afflictions of blood too many times remixed.
Get rid of the damn things, August s father said. The haymow smells like piss. Take a tire iron or a shovel or whatever tool suits you. You ve been after me for school money? I ll give you a dollar a tail. You have your jackknife? You have it sharp? You take their tails and pound them to a board, and then after a few days we ll have a settling up. Small tails worth as much as large tails, it s all the same.
The cats calicos, tabbies, dirty white, gray, jet black, and tawny sat among the hay bales scratching and yawning like indolent apes inhabiting the remains of a ruined temple. August had never actually killed a cat before but, like most farm boys, he had engaged in plenty of casual acts of torture. Cats, as a species, retained a feral edge, and as a result were not subject to the rules of husbandry that governed man s relation with horses or cows or dogs. August figured that somewhere along the line cats had struck a bargain they knew they could expect to feel a man s boot if they came too close; in return, they kept their freedom and nothing much was expected of them.
A dollar a tail. August thought of the severed appendages, pressed and dried, stacking up like currency in the teller drawer of some alien bank. Fifty dollars at least, maybe seventy-f
She closed her books and put them into her backpack. Looks like study hall is over, she said. Thanks, Dad. Let s get you to the bath.
August was twelve and there were cats in the barn. Litters begetting litters begetting litters some thin and misshapen with the afflictions of blood too many times remixed.
Get rid of the damn things, August s father said. The haymow smells like piss. Take a tire iron or a shovel or whatever tool suits you. You ve been after me for school money? I ll give you a dollar a tail. You have your jackknife? You have it sharp? You take their tails and pound them to a board, and then after a few days we ll have a settling up. Small tails worth as much as large tails, it s all the same.
The cats calicos, tabbies, dirty white, gray, jet black, and tawny sat among the hay bales scratching and yawning like indolent apes inhabiting the remains of a ruined temple. August had never actually killed a cat before but, like most farm boys, he had engaged in plenty of casual acts of torture. Cats, as a species, retained a feral edge, and as a result were not subject to the rules of husbandry that governed man s relation with horses or cows or dogs. August figured that somewhere along the line cats had struck a bargain they knew they could expect to feel a man s boot if they came too close; in return, they kept their freedom and nothing much was expected of them.
A dollar a tail. August thought of the severed appendages, pressed and dried, stacking up like currency in the teller drawer of some alien bank. Fifty dollars at least, maybe seventy-f
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Autoren-Porträt von Callan Wink
Callan Wink has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays appear widely, including in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope All–Story, Playboy, Men’s Journal and The Best American Short Stories anthology. His first book, Dog Run Moon, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Callan Wink
- 2021, 304 Seiten, Masse: 13 x 20 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Random House Trade Paperbacks
- ISBN-10: 0812983904
- ISBN-13: 9780812983906
- Erscheinungsdatum: 27.10.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
In this tightly controlled yet highly unpredictable novel we discover what it is like to come of age in a part of America that is always changing, always the same. The Guardian Told with all the economy, clarity of character, and lively prose that mark [Callan] Wink s short stories, this is writing that would tell just as well around the campfire as it does on the page. The Millions
Like a current Jim Harrison, Wink makes irresistible drama out of an individual s search for identity in landscapes that are by turns romantic and limiting. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
August is an exceptional coming-of-age story. Callan Wink is too wise and empathetic a writer to ever allow his readers easy judgments as we follow his memorable young protagonist on his precarious way through adolescence. An outstanding debut novel and worthy follow-up to Wink s widely praised collection of stories. Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of The Risen and Serena
Callan Wink s characters are as real and vivid as if they d stepped into your living room, uninvited, to tell their stories. His style is as clear, precise, and starkly poetic as the young Hemingway s, but with a more droll sense of humor. This book is simply super a deft, beautiful, deeply engaging read. Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane
August is the rural coming-of-age that so many of us experience but so rarely see in print. Callan Wink has a voice like Annie Proulx s; he lands every detail with concrete authenticity and every emotional moment with tangible feeling. Rae DelBianco, author of 2019 Prix Littéraire Lucien-Barrière winner Rough Animals
August is alive. I haven t connected with a character so intensely and sometimes uncomfortably since I first read Jim Harrison s early novels almost thirty years ago. Wink s prose has Harrison
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s into-the-vein immediacy and Tom McGuane s perfect pitch, and there s a hard-to-pin-down hint of Cormac McCarthy in there too (so that makes three of my heroes). But the voice and ethos are new to me, and absolutely Wink s. James A. McLaughlin, Edgar Award winning author of Bearskin
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