Well - Hardcover

McIntosh, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117511 ISBN 13: 9780802117519

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2003

Synopsis

A cast of characters primarily from the working class of a Seattle suburb grapples with dark compulsions and painful emotions in their search for sex, drugs, violence, symbols of their faith, and local sports championships. A first novel.

About this title

Review

In his debut novel, Well, Matthew McIntosh has produced an impressive, unsettling portrait of the inhabitants of Federal Way, WA, a blue-collar suburb of Seattle. This book is less a novel than a collage of voices (mostly first-person, sometimes disembodied) unified by their disparate attempts to overcome (or at least come to terms with) physical and emotional pain, addiction, loss, dysfunctional and withering relationships and other common, but intensely personal, problems. Most striking is that these citizens are acutely aware of their flaws, describing their most intimate thoughts and stories with a twinge of sadness, as if confessing--but not making excuses--for their actions. Some are hopeful, most are resigned, and there is a sense of entrapment among the characters, a realisation that they may not have the strength, patience or even a clue how to change for the better. They tell us their strange dreams, fantasies, describe fleeting feelings of self-control.

Of the few, more traditional short stories, "Fishboy" is strongest, wherein a high-school student realises finally that his obsession with a classmate is unhealthy. In "Gunman" McIntosh creates a faux news report of a bus driver's random shooting, containing succinct elucidation of what drives these people to speak: "Why do these things happen? What is it that allows them to happen? We wonder if there is a higher order to the universe. We wonder if there is a higher order to our world, at least. We report that our world is falling apart. And we report that we are falling apart." With the proof in the writing, not the ambitiousness or media fanfare, Well is a hauntingly memorable book from a refreshing, new voice. --Michael Ferch, Amazon.com

Review

"At last we've found the young writer who will carry us into the new millennium. Matthew McIntosh brilliantly displays the world of today with bleak love, desperate hope, and ruthless compassion. The top writer of his generation."

"A brilliant meditation of the way in which human beings invest in various sourts of meanings--a game, a body (your own or someone else's), a drug--and how this investment never quite delivers what you thought it would. It's a verbally pyrotechnic, formally exciting, and emotionally devastating book."

"The humanity of the people sings off the page. They are not characters in a book, but rather living beings with all the hopes, dreams, fears, loves, hates, illusions, and rationalizations that are part of the human dilemma. A book that still resonates in my heart."

"Daringly structured ... McIntosh shows a remarkable facility for capturing different voices, the way people speak and think in their most private moments, the circular, stammering way that inarticulate people describe pivotal moments of their lives....Extremely involving and interesting."

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802117511
• ISBN 13: 9780802117519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 276