Letting Loose the Hounds – Stories - Softcover

Udall, Brady

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393335542 ISBN 13: 9780393335545

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

Exploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall's stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. From the night a six-foot-three Apache Indian holding a goat steps into a moonlit Arizona backyard in "Midnight Raid" to the pivotal moment when a man, delirious from a dental extraction, gets rescued by a stranger in the title story, Udall injects his stories and characters with equal parts darkness and humor. These are sad and sweet stories, moving from the familiar to surprising destinations. But even when disaster looms, Udall's fine comic sense sustains his men and women in their sometimes extravagant efforts to connect and cope. Plunged in the moment, these stories have velocity; they spray gravel as they take off.

About this title

Review:

The West is a pretty grim place to live, judging by the characters who populate Brady Udall's collection of short stories, Letting Loose the Hounds. Misfits, miscreants and outcasts all, his heroes stumble miserably through a desert landscape of "petrified wood and dinosaur bones", of failed marriages, dysfunctional families and their own aching loneliness in search of reconnection to the world they've lost.

What redeems this collection, and often the characters as well, is Mr. Udall's trenchant humour and sharp appreciation for the ridiculous. No one is more aware of the absurdity of his situation than the main character of "Midnight Raid" who is caught red-handed breaking into his ex-wife's house with a pygmy goat under his arm. In "Vernon" the narrator sees the irony in returning to his dead-end hometown after a semester of college: "I liked college ... Just the idea made me ridiculously happy ... But I had this nervous feeling I couldn't get rid of, like something in the bottom of my gut slowly eating at my insides ... I came back to Vernon to stay." The only recourse for these lost souls is small, often funny, yet always sad acts of rebellion. Mr Udall's West might not be a great place to live, but in Letting Loose the Hounds it makes for a compelling visit.

Review:

An irresistible performance.--Judith Freeman, author of Red Water

Brady Udall works with a whole lot of grace and an exquisite eye for detail. His characters find redemption in the utterly surprising places we suspected it lurked all along.--Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness

Bittersweet....memorable....Udall breathes fresh life into tales of the modern West.

Funny, unpredictable, and abounding with strange beauty.

Brady Udall must have a wild and lonely heart. Nothing scares him, not emptiness or fallen hopes or silence, not the unsparing and fractured geography out there in the new American West.--John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little

Anybody who is very funny and writes, with love and a full heart, about goats, Whoppers, plastic deer, Mormons basketball, and nervous system disorders has got what it takes. Brady Udall has got what it takes, and thank goodness it doesn't break his heart to give it away.--Clyde Edgerton, author of The Bible Salesman

Individually, Brady Udall's stories are exciting, hilarious, gripping, and usually a bit sad. Collectively, they make a work of great power, one that illuminates the usually darkened corners of the male character.--Pinckney Benedict, author of Dogs of God

Udall's West emerges as a place of passion and despair without the mythic overtones of gunslingers and Marlboro men. It is a place filled with as much laughter as tears, and a place that I hope we hear from again quite soon.--Michael A. Elliott

Exhilarating or chilling... Udall's stories can be as funny as they are dark.--Jim Shepard

One of the top writers of his generation.... Brady Udall's stories, full of comedy and pain and trouble, carry a mighty kick.--Thom Jones, author of The Pugilist at Rest

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393335542
• ISBN 13: 9780393335545
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224