Postcards - Softcover

Proulx, Annie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 068480087X ISBN 13: 9780684800875

Publisher: Scribner, 1994

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of The Shipping News comes Postcards, the tale of the Blood family, New England farmers who must confront the twentieth century -- and their own extinction. As the family slowly disintegrates, its members struggle valiantly against the powerful forces of loneliness and necessity, seeking a sense of home and place forever lost.
Loyal Blood, eldest son, is forced to abandon the farm when he takes his lover's life, thus beginning a quintessentially American odyssey of solitude and adventure. Yearning for love, yet forced by circumstance to be always alone, Loyal comes to symbolize the alienation and frustration behind the American dream.

About this title

Review:

Frederick Busch Chicago Tribune A rich, dark and brilliant feast of a book.

David Bradley The New York Times Book Review Story makes this novel compelling; technique makes it beautiful.

Michael Upchurch San Francisco Chronicle Superb....Postcards makes Proulx as a gifted prose stylist who renders her characters on the page to mesmerizing effect.

Frederick Busch Chicago Tribune A novel that feels like a fifth or sixth, not a first. This richly talented writer announces with Postcards that we had better, from now on, be listening for her voice...astonishingly accomplished.

Geoffrey Stokes The Boston Sunday Globe E. Annie Proulx's Postcards triumphantly delivers.

From the Back Cover:

'Postcards' is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home – not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences...

"The richness of America is portrayed with memorable effect in this remarkable first novel – Faulkner springs to mind. 'Postcards' is written from the heart and – for its raspy dialogue, laconic humour and beautiful description of the natural world – deserves to be widely read."
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

"'Postcards' is a remarkable novel; poetic and yet driven by a strong narrative, tragic and yet scored with deep veins of humour. Loyal Blood is one of those rare, haunted characters who continue to live in the mind after you finish the book. 'Postcards' is told in a resonant prose that both soars and gets down in the dirt – a debut which should be read by anyone who values fine, honest writing."
LITERARY REVIEW

"'Postcards' is a sweeping and dramatic tale. Proulx's deadpan style encompasses both heartbreak and hilarity, and the fantastic narrative flourishes are balanced with gritty realism. Not since Steinbeck has the migrant worker's life been so evocatively rendered."
DAILY TELEGRAPH

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 068480087X
• ISBN 13: 9780684800875
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320