The Left and the Lucky - A Novel

"One of America''s greatest storytellers."--Jonathan Evison The acclaimed Willy Vlautin returns with a heartbreaking and tender novel about two young brothers, the vicissitudes of fate, and unexpected connection--a beautiful and bittersweet portrait that illuminates the power of friendship and how it can save lives in multiple ways. Eddie Wilkens is a workaholic house painter in his early forties. His wife has left him to her regret, and his main employee, Houston, is a loafer and scoundrel who barely shows up for work. Unassuming and self-reliant, Eddie is thoughtful man who rarely gets angry, despite life''s frequent provocations, but he is ruled by a guilt that he has carried for nearly twenty years. Next door, a woman and her two sons move in with her frail and aging mother. The youngest boy, Russell, eight-years-old, is quiet and small for his age and lives in constant terror of his increasingly lost and troubled fifteen-year-old brother, Curtis. As their mother struggles to keep the family together and the grandmother''s health begins to faulter they find themselves unable to protect Russell and themselves from Curtis''s cruelty, which threatens to explode in frenetic violence. Though neither knows it, Russell and Eddie will become each other''s saving grace. While Russell''s home life disintegrates he begins waiting in Eddie''s backyard for him to get off work. Eddie offers the boy small acts of kindness: he feeds him, gives him jobs to do, listens to his dreams of escape, and offers Russell a glimpse into a world of hope and humor. A world of misfit painters, a derelict muscle car, an old dog, and the comradery and companionship of Eddie and his crew. In return, Russell gives Eddie a reason to carry on and helps him lay to rest the guilt that has plagued him for half of his life. Together, this makeshift father and son begin to build better life, daring to trade the bleakness and cynicism around them for hope and friendship. From a writer revered for his thoughtful and compassionate portrayal of realistic American life, The Left and the Lucky is a heartbreakingly honest examination of how circumstance shapes our lives, and how the luck of finding someone who needs us can transcend bitter loneliness and prevent us from giving up on dreaming of a better life. ...

Relazione

"Willy Vlautin writes about people overlooked by society and overlooked by literature. In The Horse, he tells the story of a tenderhearted man who has a steady talent and a crushing addiction. It is both a work of extraordinary compassion and a really great novel." - Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake
"A moving tale of suffering and redemption, The Horse portrays the immense gravity of what it takes to be human in tough times, and the elusive grace that might just be grasped from music, animals, and memory." - Geraldine Brooks
"I loved this novel so much, though it broke my heart again and again. No one anywhere writes with such power and such stark beauty about American desperation and want, American loneliness and heartache. We need Willy Vlautin like we needed Johnny Cash, like we needed Larry McMurtry-he's essential and every book he writes proves it all over again." - Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Throttle and Strange Weather
Praise for THE HORSE: - Praise for THE HORSE:
"A moving tale of suffering and redemption, The Horse portrays the immense gravity of what it takes to be human in tough times, and the elusive grace that might just be grasped from music, animals, and memory." - Geraldine Brooks
"A work of extraordinary compassion and a really great novel." - Ann Patchett
I loved this novel so much, though it broke my heart again and again. No one anywhere writes with such power and such stark beauty about American desperation and want, American loneliness and heartache. We need Willy Vlautin like we needed Johnny Cash, like we needed Larry McMurtry-he's essential and every book he writes proves it all over again." - Joe Hill
"Might just be his masterpiece. . . . Set against the desolate majesty of the high desert, Vlautin's depiction of one broken soul trying to save another is aspirational, allegorical and, ultimately, transcendent." - Los Angeles Times
"Willy Vlautin captures the American West like few other writers. His prose is always excellent, his characters always beautifully drawn, and that promises to be the case with his next novel, about an isolated Nevada man in his 60s who is visited by a blind horse that refuses to leave." - NPR
"Enigmatic, beautiful. . . . The Horse taps a wealth of influences-Hemingway, Johnny Cash, John Huston's film The Misfits-but Vlautin's cadences and wit are his alone, sharp and bracing, like shots of whiskey. . . . He's a scribe of the underclass, reporting along the margins, teasing melodies from noise and silences. . . . Mythical yet inventive, a struggle between man and beast, The Horse follows the playbook of The Old Man and the Sea or Julia Phillips's recent Bear weighing the totemic natural world against the frailties of the human condition." - Washington Post
"The novel itself feels like a classic song, a lament of a lonesome balladeer, resulting in a singular masterpiece. Vlautin has composed another classic." - Booklist (starred review)

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Willy Vlautin
• Editore: Harper Collins Usa
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 18.03.2026
• EAN: 9780063346635
• ISBN: 978-0-06-334663-5
• Pagine: 256
• Dimensioni: 140 mm x 210 mm x 21 mm
• Categorie: Narrativa > Romanzi; Narrative theme: Coming of age, FICTION: Literary, FICTION: Coming of Age, FICTION: Small Town & Rural *, FICTION: Friendship, Literature / General Fiction, Literature / Family