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FICTION, NONFICTION, AND PLAYSBoswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel. --from Publishers Weekly review
The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards was a finalist for the 2010 PEN USA Fiction Prize.
The first line of each story: Both things first: Greta Steno is two places at once and walking. Three boys smoke and talk about sex.He was black, too tall to be a dwarf, too short to be normal. Snow weighted the limbs of trees.Let's forbear the usual drift. Father McEwen knew the advantage of his height and used it for God's work. A friend of my ex-wife's invited me to a party on the Upper East Side. Helen Swann shivers at the bus stop, coatless and confident the day will warm. Bobby Bell's fingers numbered four to a hand. After lunch that day, Lisa's sister drank too much. Claude returns from the coffeehouse to find his suitcase splayed across the motel bed and the manager's wife picking through his shirts and underwear.
Paul Lann's window on the silent world was narrow, but no one else had any view at all. As much as anything really happens, this really did.
Publishers Weekly review: In clear, charming prose, novelist Boswell delivers a satisfying exploration of the craft of writing fiction, drawing from an array of well-chosen examples. In one instance he offers a full-bodied analysis of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych to illustrate his argument abou the use of social paradigm in fiction; in a chapter on plitics in the novel, he helpfully streamlines a Noam Chomsky essay into an explanatory list of the political responsibilities of the intellectual. Boswell's defense of his concept of the "half-known world"--the idea that there must be "a dimension to the fictional reality that escapes comprehension"--is spiritedly articulated and defended, and the book feels written for the serious writing student rather than the beginner. However, while addressing a sophisticated audience, he is direct--a chapter on omniscient narrators answers tough narrative questions in an easy-to-follow manner. Throughout, Boswell presents autobiographical moments and brief vignettes of his own devising to illustrate his concepts, reinforcing the fact that, like his great predecessor in craft writing John Gardner, he is a working fiction writer who knows his material.
A finalist for the Western Writers Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2008
Treasure Island opens with the arrival of a mysterious stranger at the Admiral Benbow, a coastal inn run by the Hawkins family. The stranger – Billy Bones – strolls in singing about dead men and rum. His tales of pirates walking the plank or swinging by the neck fascinate young Jim Hawkins, as does his request to keep an eye out for a “seafaring man with one leg.” The one-legged man does not appear at the inn, but two others come calling. The first is Black Dog, a “pale, tallowy creature” missing two fingers. Billy Bones runs him off. The second is Blind Pew, a sightless beggar in a tattered cloak who gives Bones a death summons – the “black spot.” Shortly after Blind Pew leaves, Billy Bones dies from a sudden stroke and Jim Hawkins discovers among the man’s possessions a treasure map.
This is the correct way to start a treasure story. The characters should have names like Billy Bones, Black Dog, and Blind Pew. Several should be missing significant body parts. Death must be summoned no later than chapter three. And the hero ought to be a brave and lively kid in possession of a map or a wild tale or a genie’s bottle. Our treasure story opens in a therapist’s office on a balmy evening in the Neverland of Southern California. Colorful names, wild tales, and the summoning of death all eventually find a place in the narrative, but they don’t occupy the same space they hold in Treasure Island. They can’t. The world has changed too much since Robert Louis Stevenson penned his yarn. Peg legs, heroes, and treasure are viewed through a different lens. "A luminous novel" - Kirkus starred review "The texture of this replete portrayal of Middle America and its discontents suggests an inspired collaboration between Anne Tyler and John Cheever. Only a handful of Boswell's contemporaries have written anything better." - Booklist starred review Opening paragraphs of Century's Son:
It is amazing the things people throw away.
The doors leaned against a high plank fence in the narrow alley, old doors with arched windows, brass plates, and faceted glass knobs. A patina of frost made them glitter in the truck's headlights. Morgan drank the last sip of coffee from the lid of his thermos and climbed from the cab of the garbage truck. The doors had heft. Oak, he guessed, solid boards joined by a craftsman long dead. The windows showed runnels from the settling of the glass. In the predawn light, Morgan's breath eddied about the wrinkled glass, spreading over his distorted reflection like an erasure. "A smart, sensitive, unforgettable novel...Rare is the contemporary novel that simultaneously entertains [and]unselfconsciously inspires. Beyond even these noteworthy accomplishments, American Owned Love tranlates qualities usually impossible to describe, the ineffable, luminous, mutating qualities of love." - Chicago Tribune "Mystery Ride is deeply irresistible...To read it is to enlarge one's own life." - Sandra Scofield, The New York Times Book Review "Mystery Ride is love itself...old-fashioned, down-in-the-trenches, hole-in-the-heart love that transcends the tedium of life, tragic loss, even divorce...An extraordinary book." - Chicago Tribune A collection of short stories. Winner of the PEN West award for fiction.
"A stunning blend of eroticism and intrigue..." - Chicago Tribune
"Robert Boswell's prose is filled with poetry, wit, variety. His imagination is extensive. One reads and remembers much with pleasure." - The New York Times Book Review Named by London Independent as one of the seven best books published in Great Britain in 1997 "Dazzling...Imagine Salinger's Glass family transplanted to the Sun Belt of the 1970's" - The New York Times "A piercing first novel" - Time "A beautifully rendered story of trying to break free of the quiet murders of the spirit perpetrated in the name of love." - The Boston Globe "Boswell again and again deftly demonstrates the eternal presentness of the past in the lives of characters we come to care about deeply. His brilliant debut as a novelist will be a hard act to follow." - Chicago Tribune Winner of the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction "Powerful, taut, stark, intense with human passion" - Tim O'Brien "Like a seemingly effortless dance...a stunning performance." - Village Voice
Virtual Death was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Prize and selected by Science Fiction Chronicle as one of the best novels of the year.
Winner of the John Gassner Prize for playwriting. |
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