Goodnight Nebraska

Zusatztext "You'll want...to buy copies for all your reading friends--flawless."-- San Francisco Chronicle    "What a remarkable debut!... A small town that is as vivid and alive as Sinclair Lewis's Zenith! Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg! Ohio! and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon."-- The Denver Post      "Deft! touching! and humorous. In the tradition of Richard Ford! Raymond Carver! and Anne Tyler."-- The Christian Science Monitor "McNeal is aware that many more of us will accept the sadness we know than venture out in search of a possibly painful unknown--and he renders such decisions in language whose very plainess feels musical."-- The New York Times "A vivid! tender and thoughtful portrait of a great plains farm town. These sad! secret stories bring out the best of McNeal's writing! and are his finest and most lasting gifts to the reader."-- Los Angeles Times "Completely compelling. A beautifully drawn portrait of a town that at once combines and cradles the people who grow up in it."-- National Public Radio "A strange! bumpy! and memorable trip through small town USA--a compelling journey into the heart of American life."-- Redbook Informationen zum Autor Tom McNeal Klappentext At the age of 17, Randall Hunsacker shoots his mother's boyfriend, steals a car and comes close to killing himself. His second chance lies in a small Nebraska farm town, where the landmarks include McKibben's Mobil Station, Frmka's Superette, and a sign that says The Wages of Sin is Hell. This is Goodnight, a place so ingrown and provincial that Randall calls it "Sludgeville"-until he starts thinking of it as home. In this pitch-perfect novel, Tom McNeal explores the currents of hope, passion, and cruelty beneath the surface of the American heartland. In Randall, McNeal creates an outcast whose redemption lies in Goodnight, a strange, small, but ultimately embracing community where Randall will inspire fear and adulation, win the love of a beautiful girl and nearly throw it all away.The Supernormalist When Randall Hunsacker was thirteen, his family moved from Salt Lake City to a canyon in the foothills, into a stilted five-room house perched above the tightest in a series of tight turns in the canyon's sharply descending road, so that from their front porch Randall's family often got a good view of cars pushed to the limits of control. The screech of fires, followed by the acrid and-to Randall's nose-exhilarating odor of burnt rubber, was an everyday occurrence. Randall himself hoped that one of these cars would spin out and perhaps roll over. He didn't exactly hope for human carnage, but he knew that in such cases it was sometimes unavoidable. Occasionally, if he was alone as a car passed by, Randall would make the ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunking sounds he imagined a rolling car would produce. When a Buick Riviera carrying two people actually did miss the curve, Randall was disappointed he was not there to see it. It was an early July evening. He and his father were working late, painting somebody's guest house in Federal Heights. His mother had already begun her shift at the Ten Pin. His sister, Louise, was in the back of the house with a girlfriend, sitting at the kitchen table, thumbing through TV Guide and Glamour, talking about boys and haircuts. The man driving the Buick Riviera missed the curve completely, shot pell-mell up the embankment and without braking slammed through the spindly posts that supported the front porch, which dropped like a table leaf. By the time Louise and her girlfriend rushed out the back door and came sliding down the bank, the driver, an oil man from Wyoming, and his passenger, a young woman wearing Levi's and dangly silver earrings, were laughing like maniacs. The driver's comic perspective of the event did not, however, keep him from filing legal actions...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Tom McNeal
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.06.1999
• EAN: 9780375704291
• ISBN: 978-0-375-70429-1
• Pagine: 336
• Dimensioni: 130 mm x 205 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi