Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
House of Leaves author Danielewski returns with an exciting if long-winded western set in 1982 Orvop, Utah. Terminally ill teen Tom Gatestone bonds with new kid Kalin March over their love for a pair of horses owned by wealthy meat processing plant owner Orwin "Old" Porch. Before Tom dies, he pleads with Kalin to save the horses from being rendered for meat. Kalin follows through on his promise, stealing the horses and taking them through the state's canyons and mountains with a plan to set them free at a place called Tom's Crossing. On the way, he's tailed by Old Porch's teen son Russel, who's sporting his father's pistol; Tom's ghost, with whom only Kalin can communicate; and Tom's younger adopted sister, Landry, who hopes to protect Kalin on his mission. Landry confronts Russel and takes away the gun, and after Russel returns without it, Old Porch flies into a rage and kills him. Old Porch then pins the blame for the killing on Kalin and Landry, launching a lengthy game of cat-and-mouse that culminates in a well-foreshadowed bloody shoot-out. Some of the passages verge on pretentiousness, like the pages-long lists of the town's dead, which echo Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, but the novel is buoyed by its characterizations (Old Porch is an effectively menacing villain). Adventurous readers will enjoy this wild ride. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Danielewski's (The Little Blue Kite) epic novel begins with Kalin March, the new kid at the local high school, and his classmate Tom Gatestone, son of a well-established family, as they devise a plot to rescue two horses from a slaughterhouse. This coming-of-age story, set in 1982 in Orvop County, UT, is at once a Western saga, a mythological tale, and a ghost story, with elements of police procedural. Tom's younger sister Landry learns of the boys' plan and joins them on their journey to free the horses, traveling through Utah's wild canyons and mountains as winter settles in. When Kalin, Tom, and Landry pull off their heist, Orvop citizens pick sides between the determined, skilled young riders and the violent, locked-and-loaded Porch family, who own the slaughterhouse. Rumors and gossip spread as the mothers of Kalin, Tom, and Landry defend their innocence. The beauty of this elaborate novel goes beyond the page-turning plot, as the narrative cadence echoes with the clip-clop sound of horses' hooves on the ground. VERDICT A tremendous novel that merits rereading in order to absorb the suspenseful plot and appreciate its intricate construction. Fans of Danielewski's House of Leaves will clamor for his first major stand-alone novel in 25 years.--Joyce Sparrow
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Danielewski turns from postmodern confections to a decidedly untraditional take on the Western. Kalin March is the new kid in the tidy Utah town of Orvop (read Provo). There, because he's wearing odd shoes--"like a moccasin, only too worn for even the poorest Indian, and blue, though a blue faded to near gray, with leather laces and rubber soles"--he's bullied by football star Lindsey Holt, whose best friend is the smart, mischievous Tom Gatestone, who "weren't ever a brutal boy." Kalin wins their respect for two reasons: He can't fight, but he doesn't run; and, though small for his age, he's a master on horseback. Therein lies the nub of Danielewski's long, long story, which commences with the promise of "so much awful horror" occasioned by two horses, Navidad and Mouse, slated for slaughter by local patriarch Orwin Porch, "or Old Porch as he was called, though he weren't but fifty-nine." Kalin steals the two death-bound horses and heads into the mountains above Orvop, having promised Tom, who has died of a terrible cancer, that he would free them. Apologies for that spoiler, which takes place in the opening section, but Tom will become an important presence later in the narrative, a ghostly guide through the impassible mountains, even as Tom's living sister, Landry, catches up to Kalin and partakes in a slowly unfolding adventure that involves a whole lot of bloodshed. With echoes ofThe Iliad and a body count to rivalBlood Meridian, morphing from Western to horror to police procedural and back again, Danielewski's yarn is carefully plotted and imaginatively written. Its only flaw is its excessive length, as if the author were in a race with William T. Vollmann; at only a couple of dozen pages shorter thanWar and Peace, it serves as a pointed lesson in the fact that life--as so many of Danielewski's characters discover--is short indeed. Overstuffed, but a daring foray into a genre that's seen little recent experimentation. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
