Once You Break a Knuckle: Stories - Softcover

Wilson, D. W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408831317 ISBN 13: 9781408831311

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2013

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2012

In the remote Kootenay Valley in western Canada, good people sometimes do bad things. Two adolescents sabotage a rope swing; a heartbroken young man chooses not to warn his best friend about an approaching car; sons challenge their fathers.

Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue, D.W. Wilson's stories reveal to us how our best intentions can be doomed to fail or injure, how our loves can fall short or mislead us. An intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and vulnerability, doggedness and dignity, Once You Break a Knuckle explores the courage it takes to make it through another day.

About this title

Review:

D.W. Wilson's stories have a wonderfully raw, vernacular energy which carries the reader through some dark and spitefully funny moments. This is a cracking read (Jon McGregor)

Combining taut, highly economical observations of men in their day to day lives with real tenderness and a restrained lyricism about the natural world ... affecting stories about men and women ... beautiful ... A massive achievement (John Burnside, Guardian)

'The Dead Roads' was the stand-out winner of the 2011 BBC Short Story Award. My worry was that it might also be the stand-out story in this debut collection, but no - the standard is consistently, astonishingly high throughout. There are echoes of Wells Tower and Russell Banks, but Wilson's voice is distinctive, confident and completely enthralling (Geoff Dyer)

Spiky, gritty short stories ... Wilson's world is dangerous and unpredictable, and his writing has a terrific, understated force (Kate Saunders, The Times)

This is one of the finest pieces of debut fiction I've encountered in the last few years, and with it DW Wilson takes his place with other North American writers such as David Vann and Daniel Woodrell in eking out savage grace and empathy through muscular prose and the desperate circumstances of his characters ... This is a really exceptional debut, and an emphatic calling card from a genuine talent. I can't wait to read what he writes next (Doug Johnstone, Sunday Herald)

Robust, musical, slyly funny, and shining a fearless light into the yearning male heart, these powerful stories should be required reading for any curious females of the species (Bill Glaston)

Superb debut collection of stories from the winner of the BBC national short story award (Sunday Times ‘Must Reads’)

Macho Mounties, Boyish Boyz + Beers, Tough Times. + good writing (Margaret Atwood, Twitter)

There are indeed echoes of Richard Ford and Raymond Carver here - most strikingly Carver, in content certainly - but Wilson's description and dialogue also attain the same lean, elemental punch, a total and exhilarating exclusion of the extraneous (Globe and Mail)

This is one of the finest pieces of debut fiction I've encountered in the last few years, and with it DW Wilson takes his place with other North American writers such as David Vann and Daniel Woodrell in eking out savage grace and empathy through muscular prose and the desperate circumstances of his characters ... This is a really exceptional debut, and an emphatic calling card from a genuine talent. I can't wait to read what he writes next (Doug Johnstone Sunday Herald)

Book Description:

The debut collection by the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2011

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408831317
• ISBN 13: 9781408831311
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256