Well - Softcover

McIntosh, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802141439 ISBN 13: 9780802141439

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004

Synopsis

Critically acclaimed Well marks the astonishing debut of an author with a singular and unflinching voice and vision. Set primarily among the working-class of a Seattle suburb called Federal Way, this highly original novel-told in the form of interlinked short stories- extols the lives of a large cast of characters lost in various modes of darkness and despair. Whether struggling to come together or desperately alone, they grapple with dark compulsions and heart-rending afflictions. As if trapped at the bottom of a well, they search for relief, for a vehicle into the light they know is up and outside.

They search in sex, in drugs and violence, and in visions of Apocalypse and Creation, dreams of angels and killers and local sports championships. Compact, finely wrought, powerfully charged, Well ultimately rises toward the light, in a finale which echoes with the exhilarating human capacity for hope. The result is a mesmerizing tour de force that will establish Matthew McIntosh as a bold and progressive new voice of American fiction.

Stories:

BURLESQUE

Snapshots of various troubled couples on the day that the Seattle SuperSonics lose their chance at advancing to the NBA finals. Len and Adda are fighting- Len is in love with Adda (she is "the girl he wanted") but she is torn, and is leaving the next day to spend a week with her fiancéeacute;e to make sure that breaking up with him is the right thing. Len becomes jealously enraged when he finds out Adda and her fiancée will be sleeping in the same bed, begging her not to touch the man.

Nate and Sammie are also fighting: Sammie insists that a certain girl who is trying to convert Nate stop calling their house. Nate gets tired of Sammie's hysteria and beats her, only to become terrified at what he has done.

A first person narrator recalls his rather pathetic adventures with prostitutes in Thailand, where he made big money at an English language newspaper and lived like a king. He brought a woman over who now resents him for it, and they have a staid marriage while he continues to dream over prostitutes.

Raymond and his wife are at the SuperSonics game and get in a fight when Ray's wife sees he is ogling cheerleaders through his binoculars. He misses it when the team loses at the buzzer.

The SuperSonics janitor comes home to his wife, who is pregnant. He masturbates as he recalls the time he slipped out to watch a burlesque show at the strip joint across the street.


MODERN COLOR / MODERN LOVE

II. Shelly is a Korean 16-year-old boarding school student who likes having sex with strangers in bars and doing crystal meth. She falls a sleep and crashes her car through a fence, causing her mother to cry and call her "A Real American Whore" when she picks her up in prison. She meets an older man who takes her in but finally gets sick of giving her money to drink and sends her home. When her mother isn't home, she goes to the nearest bar.

III. A phone sex patron can't make up his mind what he wants his fantasy to be and the story concludes: "Do you realize what this is costing?"

IV. The story of Davin, a warehouse worker, and Sarah, who are in a band together. Davin is loving and committed to Sarah but Sarah doesn't see a future with him. She gets pregnant and they grow distant. One day Davin gets in a fight with a co-worker and is paralyzed on his left side after being hit in the skull. Sarah takes care of him in the hospital, but when he returns home he begins drinking. One night he picks the 2-year-old up while drunk and Sarah becomes hysterical when the child begins crying. He beats Sarah and is issued a restraining order. Sarah moves out and eventually begins dating a construction worker she does not really love.


CHICKEN

A group of guys gets into a game of chicken with a car containing a guy and a bunch of girls. When the guys cut the girls off suddenly, the drive

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 Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802141439
• ISBN 13: 9780802141439
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288