The Black Brook [Paperback]

Tom Drury (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2000

"It was a dry, dusty summer day in New Hampshire. Paul and Mary Emmons were having lunch in a diner called Happy's when Mary happened to notice a dog in a car in the parking lot with his head turned upside down." Thus begins the strange and captivating saga of Paul Nash, a.k.a. Paul Emmons, a fallen accountant whose inadvisable return to New England, the region of his crimes, sets the stage for this darkly comic novel of love, death, guilt, redemption, and the various forms of clam chowder. More than a dog's head gets turned upside down in the course of Paul's transatlantic misadventures. Through it all Paul strives to find and accomplish his mission in life, and myriad characters contrive to tell their stories -- of unkept promises, nightmarish evenings, identities lost and found.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is certainly no disputing the fact that "serious" contemporary fiction has valid things to say about "real life," but the worth of the ludicrous has perhaps been undervalued in modern literature as of late. If television can explore our psyches with one-armed men and dancing dwarves, and if the film industry can claim the Coen Brothers (not to mention the Farrellys) among its ranks, can't the written word itself share in the meaningful silliness? Yeah sure, you betcha. Welcome to The Black Brook and the world of Tom Drury. Fargo lite, if you will. A kinder, gentler Twin Peaks. Here, modern life is not only accepted but embraced in all its gloriously weird complexity as the author cranks up the weirdometer and opts for an anything-goes narrative suffused with breezy humor.

In 1989 in Rhode Island, accountant Paul Nash and his wife reached for the easy money, and when they fell, it seemed like they might never stop: in trouble with the law, out of the local crime syndicate's good graces, and into the arms of the Witness Relocation Program. Here they were baptized Paul and Mary Emmons, managers of a small country inn in Belgium. New name or not, Paul eventually fails to escape the lure of his past and soon finds himself leaving his wife to return to rural Connecticut. Quickly securing not only a newspaper swing shift but also the affections of his ex-best-friend's wife, he somehow finds time to investigate not only the sudden disappearance of a local creek but also the checkered history of a sexy ghost, all the while barely eluding the attentions of a few grudge-bearing Mafiosi.

Drury's first fiction, The End of Vandalism, has been compared to murals from the Works Progress Administration era. Anywhere you look, something interesting is afoot. And the representational link persists in The Black Brook, whose title springs from a moody John Singer Sargent painting. But this novel shares a certain kinship with Jackson Pollock's infinitely tangled webs of paint--amid the chaos, there is some sort of divine order, though one that resists pat explanation. It's either that or the 300 pages of belly laughs you've just endured that accounts for your breathless sigh when you hit the final paragraph. --Bob Michaels --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Drury follows his winning debut, The End of Vandalism, a laugh-out-loud funny portrait of small-town eccentrics in Connecticut, with a diffuse and unfocused attempt at, one guesses, social satire. This novel, too long, insistently not funny and seemingly enamored of the non sequitur, reads like the script for an unmade John Cassavetes film. The protagonist, Paul, is an unremarkable fellow from New England attending college in Quebec, sharing a house with Loom and Alice, his best friends, who later marry. Paul weds Mary, the widow of a man for whom he interned during the summer, filing police records in Boston. After graduation, Paul takes an accountancy job and bumbles into money laundering for one of his clients. This earns him a subpoena and eventual entry into a witness protection program, a short stay in the Pacific Northwest and then a spell in Brussels, where Mary has inherited a hotel. Paul and Mary split up, and Paul lands a newspaper job in the small New Hampshire town where Loom and Alice live. Paul has an affair with Alice, speaks with a woman's ghost (she committed suicide or drowned), goes searching for the woman's daughter, whom he finds working as a golf pro in Scotland. And so on. Since Mary is also a copier of famous paintings, Paul returns to Belgium to ask her to make a copy of Sargent's Black Brook, because (perhaps) one of the stories Paul worked on at the newspaper was about a stream that disappeared. This book will try the patience of anyone who does not equate feckless with funny. It's a tremendous disappointment from a writer once called a mixture of Keillor and Carver.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (February 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395957958
• ISBN-13: 978-0395957950
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,904,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I can't define Drury's writing but I love him., September 9, 2000

By 

"msgranddame" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Brook (Hardcover)

I don't think it ruins anything to mention that the title comes from a painting of a girl's thoughts. How does Tom Drury think about so much and with such wit? As an experiment before writing this review I flipped the book open randomly at several points. Just as I thought, there was a wonderful surprise to be savored on every page. There are descriptions, scenes and sentences I wanted to bring home and turn into house pets. The fact that he manages to weave a plot around all this delicious satirical writing is amazing. I can't wait for his next book since I've read all three now.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All his books are great, August 11, 2002

By 

Linda Gaines - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Brook (Paperback)

Read The Black Brook. Drury is funny and poignant. The people are a little off the beaten track but that's what makes this a book to be read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of a Kind, March 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Black Brook (Hardcover)

There is no other writer like Tom Drury. He explores the common-place, and somehow, in a casual and off-hand way, ends up exploring the profound and universal. His books seem like real life, in that it isn't always apparent what the significance is of certain observations or characters. He is a very down-to-earth writer, who cares about the characters he creates, even if they appear only briefly. In "The Black Brook" the main character, Paul, is almost heart-breaking in his inability to connect with those around him. It is a beautiful and funny book, that ends up a bit scattered at the end. But it resonates.