a book
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Wells Tower · 2009 · 256 pages
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car's windshield doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. Wells Tower's version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. With electric prose and savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a profound new collection of stories.
recommended by 2 people
sourced from public statements
Khaled Hosseini
“This is an outstanding short story collection, much of it about men on the fringes and the splendid messes they have made of their lives. There are downtrodden divorcees, narcissistic teenagers, rivaling siblings, and men struggling to reconcile with their fathers, brothers, children, and the women in their lives. The collection is by turn bizarre, hilarious, unpredictable, all of it without a single note of artifice. The final story, about, yes, pillaging Vikings, is my favorite, both brutal and surprisingly touching.”↗
