Work in Progress: The Latest from the Front Lines of Literature

Announcing: Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle Sean McDonald There are professional thrills and there are professional thrills, but I am extra especially thrilled to report that FSG is going to be publishing John Darnielle's novel, Wolf in White Van, this fall. John is famous for his work with the Mountain Goats, and I suspect that none of the many fans who know his lyrics and have heard his stories will be surprised by the revelation that his is a genuinely literary mind. And it's true - Wolf in White Van emphatically proves that his imagination and voice are at least as at home on the page as they are in song. There are many things worth singling out for praise in Wolf in White Van: the unforgettable main character, Sean Phillips, who has been isolated by a disfiguring injury since age seventeen; Trace Italian, the intricate game within the novel that Sean created and runs; the interplay of real and imagined worlds, which is both complex and heartbreaking; the structure of the storytelling - audacious, brilliant, and never anything but convincing and unreasonably suspenseful; the prose itself, which is precise and beautiful and (forgive me) lyrical. But the greatest and perhaps most unexpected satisfaction is the quality that encompasses all these things, that this is simply a magnificent novel, weird and dark and wonderful, adventurous and spellbinding in the way of any great piece of literary art. Read on... Book Keeping with... Michelle Huneven The Book Keepers Series "I had tried many times over the years to read Moby Dick, but it never took. One night, I couldn't sleep and I went into my husband's office and looked for a boring book to put me to sleep. Oh, there's Moby Dick, I thought. That'll do the trick. Five chapters later, I was wide awake and practically shouting with pleasure. What had I ever been thinking? It is the most astonishing, idiosyncratic, encyclopedic, beautifully written, sprawling and endlessly fascinating book I've ever read. I wasn't bored for a second. Even the cetology was so stunningly written, with such an unerring eye for the amusing, arcane detail..." Read on... More