American Rust: A Novel [Kindle Edition] Author: Philipp Meyer | Language: English | ISBN:
B001TGYTTW | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Download for free books American Rust: A Novel Epub Free for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link The debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Son
BONUS: This edition contains a reader's guide.
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation—as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love—that arise from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.
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- File Size: 1102 KB
- Print Length: 386 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0385527519
- Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (February 24, 2009)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001TGYTTW
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,446 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Sagas - #82
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As my four regular readers can attest, I do not have much good to say about the contemporary novelists held in high regard by literary critics and prize juries. As a rule, I don't trust the taste of book critics. Too many have joined the Cult of the Sentence, deeming that fiction best that piles up the most standout sentences, imagery and "lyrical" language, the accumulated weight of which apparently makes a novel literature with a capital L. It's been a long time since I picked up a book from the New Fiction shelf at the bookstore, read the first page and walked to the register with it. The triumph of style over story in modern literary fiction leaves me cold, bitter and buying classics.
Then I read a couple of reviews of American Rust. (Yes, I still do read reviews, even the New York Times Book Review, hoping against all evidence for change, going back again and again like an abused spouse.) The only thing in the reviews that got me looking for the novel was the subject matter: the effect of industrial collapse on America workers. Being from a long line of working class rednecks, I decided to give another new author a chance based on that alone.
And I'm glad I did. Philipp Meyer has produced a book that, by the end, had me comparing his novel to Richard Wright's Native Son and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Like them, he masterfully weaves into the story the socioeconomic and political pressures that bear on the lives of his characters without preaching, without beating us over the head with a morality tale. Yet you can't come away from it without knowing in your bones the corrosive effects of industrial decline on the lives of his working class characters. He has deep sympathy for all of his characters, the "good" and the "bad.
I picked up `American Rust' simply because the premise sounded promising and the cover art was utterly mesmerizing. Upon receiving the book I read a little review on the outset of the novel that likened Philipp Meyer to Russell Banks, and if you've read my reviews for `The Sweet Hereafter' or `Affliction' then you know that I consider Russell Banks to be the greatest American writer of all time and so my appetite was wet and my expectations were high upon ripping into the first chapter of `American Rust'. What I found was not what I expected, and while I think this was a fine attempt and a great jump off point, Meyer, in my opinion, has some growing to do.
He's no Russell Banks.
The novel tells the story of Isaac English and Billy Poe, two very different young men who grew up together in a small southern town. Both have had very hard childhoods. Billy lived in a divided home his whole life and has sacrificed his future in order to take care of his mother. Isaac's mother committed suicide and his sister ran off to college so he was left taking care of his crippled father. Both boys are trapped in a town too small for them with dreams of escaping they can never get up the courage to realize.
Until Isaac decides he wants out.
The novel is broken down into six sections, and some sections work much better than others. The first section is brilliant and truly gives you a rich understanding of these two young men and the poor decision they made. The second section is also very well done, further developing not only the relationship between these two men but also with their scattered families. It's within the third section that the novel starts to fall apart for me.
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