Wolf In White Van
-
DATo
- Previous Member of the Month
- Posts: 6015
- Joined: 31 Dec 2011, 07:54
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Wolf In White Van
I recently posted this to another thread but since it serves as a reasonable review I thought I would repost it here for anyone interested in reading stories of this type.
A recent (2014) best seller which I just finished reading is a novel called Wolf In White Van, by John Darnielle.
It involves a man who writes a sort of Dungeons & Dragons role playing game which is communicated through normal mail since the setting's beginning takes place before the internet was created. He invented the game when a teenager while lying in a hospital recovering from a serious "accident" which has left him grotesquely disfigured to the point that it is difficult for people to look at him.
The book's first-person narrative is written in prose which reads with the beauty of poetry. The game is called "Trace Italian" which is the place (goal) that the gammers seek. It is a place of safety and refuge in a post apocalyptic America. The moves within the game that the main character, Sean Phillips, creates, the reader comes to later learn, are thinly veiled derivations of Sean's own personal experiences as he attempts to find a place of emotional safety and security.
It is a good book which I predict will become a cult classic but difficult to make sense of until you are steeped into it fairly deeply. Sean's narrative can be described as a continuous, stream of consciousness introspection. The actual events surrounding his past are told peripherally to these introspections and are revealed in reverse order much like the sequences in the second half of David Mitchell's novel, Cloud Atlas.
A quite good but somewhat challenging read ... 4 of 5 stars.
======================================================
Reposted From Amazon: amazon.com/Wolf-White-Van-A-Novel/dp/03 ... 0374292086
Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction, Winner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adults, Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian--a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail--Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.
A recent (2014) best seller which I just finished reading is a novel called Wolf In White Van, by John Darnielle.
It involves a man who writes a sort of Dungeons & Dragons role playing game which is communicated through normal mail since the setting's beginning takes place before the internet was created. He invented the game when a teenager while lying in a hospital recovering from a serious "accident" which has left him grotesquely disfigured to the point that it is difficult for people to look at him.
The book's first-person narrative is written in prose which reads with the beauty of poetry. The game is called "Trace Italian" which is the place (goal) that the gammers seek. It is a place of safety and refuge in a post apocalyptic America. The moves within the game that the main character, Sean Phillips, creates, the reader comes to later learn, are thinly veiled derivations of Sean's own personal experiences as he attempts to find a place of emotional safety and security.
It is a good book which I predict will become a cult classic but difficult to make sense of until you are steeped into it fairly deeply. Sean's narrative can be described as a continuous, stream of consciousness introspection. The actual events surrounding his past are told peripherally to these introspections and are revealed in reverse order much like the sequences in the second half of David Mitchell's novel, Cloud Atlas.
A quite good but somewhat challenging read ... 4 of 5 stars.
======================================================
Reposted From Amazon: amazon.com/Wolf-White-Van-A-Novel/dp/03 ... 0374292086
Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction, Winner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adults, Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian--a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail--Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.
“I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.”
― Steven Wright
― Steven Wright
-
gali
- Previous Member of the Month
- Posts: 53655
- Joined: 22 Oct 2013, 07:12
- Currently Reading:
- Bookshelf Size: 2299
- Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-gali.html
- Reading Device: B00I15SB16
- Publishing Contest Votes: 0
