Clearcut [Paperback]

Nina Shengold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 9, 2005

Set in the gloriously rugged backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, Nina Shengold’s gripping debut novel follows three people in search of new lives deep into uncharted terrain of the body and heart.
When rough-hewn loner Earley Ritter picks up a hitchhiker one rainy night, he can’t imagine how much it will change his life. A "shake-rat" who salvages cedar stumps left when loggers clearcut, Earley seems to have little in common with Reed Alton, a gifted Berkeley dropout. But when Earley meets Zan, the fiery and mysterious woman Reed has been following, erotic sparks fly in unexpected directions. Thrown together in the splendid isolation of the woods, with passions and tensions mounting, the unlikely trio achieves a fragile balance that–like their idyllic patch of forest–will be shattered by violence. At once a page-turning psychological drama and a colorful, wildly comic recreation of a lost time and place, Clearcut explores the boundaries that divide us, and what it takes to cross them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Playwright Shengold debuts with a shaggy, steamy '70s ménage à trois in a Pacific Northwest logging town. Chainsaw-wielding "shake-rat" Earley Ritter (he clears and sells stump chips) finds a rare companionship with a young hitchhiker from Berkeley, Reed Alton, despite their differences in background and logging experience. Earley is a big mountain-man loner who lives in a bus parked in the woods, while Reed is a skinny, smart-alecky rich-boy novice pining for his sometime girlfriend, Zan, whom they set off to look for in a tree-planting camp. Zany, shapely Zan comes on to manly Earley and comforts Reed, holding them both in thrall, and pretty soon the three are getting intimate in Earley's hippie bus. During the week, the two men labor side by side at the exhausting work of clearing stumps; joined by their worship of Zan, they become lovers. When an outsider witnesses these hot-house shenanigans, violence erupts and Zan flees to save her own skin, leaving the men to face a tragic fate atop Washington's Mount Olympus. Shengold's characters are richly three-dimensional, and plenty of authentic era detail makes for a ripping read.
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Review

"A stunning book, one of the best literary novels I have come across in a long time. Shengold's prose is fluent like a river, and her characters are as sharp as knives in this beautiful love story."  --Da Chen, author of Colors of the Mountain

"A beautiful, romantic, alive book. Clearcut is the patchouli and reckless love of the ‘70s, the rugged beauty and wreckage of the Pacific Northwest forests, woven together with a storyteller's grace and the great grand character of Earley Ritter, with whom every reader will fall in love.” —Amy Bloom, author of Love Invents Us

“Shengold captures the sorrow and loss that are the constant companions of bliss.” –Rebecca Stowe, author of The Shadow of Desire

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (August 9, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400079691
• ISBN-13: 978-1400079698
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nina Shengold writes fiction, nonfiction, theatre, and film. Her novel CLEARCUT, a Book Sense Notable selection and Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Books pick, also won nerve.com's Henry Miller Award for Best Literary Sex Scene; the Washington Post called it a "red-hot love triangle...GRADE: A."

She collaborated with photographer Jennifer May on RIVER OF WORDS: PORTRAITS OF HUDSON VALLEY WRITERS, profiling 76 writers including John Ashbery, Shalom Auslander, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Cornelius Eady, Nick Flynn, Frank McCourt, Susan Orlean, Esmeralda Santiago, John Sayles, and Pete Seeger. www.riverofwordsbook.com

With Eric Lane, Nina has edited 13 theatre anthologies for Vintage Books and Viking Penguin. Her plays include HOMESTEADERS, FINGER FOODS Foods, ROMEO/JULIET, and WAR AT HOME: STUDENTS RESPOND TO 9/11, written with Nicole Quinn and 40 students. www.playscripts.com

She won the Writers Guild Award for her teleplay LABOR OF LOVE, starring Marcia Gay Harden. Other TV credits include BLIND SPOT, starring Joanne Woodward & Laura Linney, and SHINE Award winner UNWED FATHER. Nina lives in the Hudson Valley with her teenage daughter and a somewhat golden retriever. For more information: www.ninashengold.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of logs, legs, and sensitive lugs, October 20, 2005

By 

Mikhail Horowitz (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clearcut (Paperback)

Clearcut is a pitch-perfect evocation of a time and place -- a great time, the early 1970s, and a great place, the Pacific Northwest -- that tells a big, three-hearted American tall tale. Even Sam Shepard and Peter Coyote would envy the rugged nobility and lone-wolf manliness of Earley Ritter, the Paul Bunyan of hippie "shake-rats," who has the courage to enter into a previously unthinkable menage a trois while still maintaining his deeply ingrained notions of decency and loyalty. But as fresh and torrential as the sex is, and as crackling and indelible as the characters are, the inspired descriptions of America's last wilderness are even better -- Shengold writes with a sinewy lyricism of cloud and mountain and forest, elk and trout and clam, that would bring a smile to the mossy lips of John Muir. This is the best possible book to take with you on a weekend trek through the backwoods-preferably to a remote cabin with a hot tub full of literate nymphs and astute satyrs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong on Many Levels at Once, May 29, 2006

By 

Jerry M. Sander (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clearcut (Paperback)

Nina Shengold manages to do something magical in this novel: evoking a time recently past while propelling you into the thick of an atmosphere so immediate you won't be able to shake it off easily after finishing reading.

Yes, there once was a time when life-choices had a broader range of erotic and economic possibilities, making for interpersonal confusions, adventures, victories, and sad losses. Nina's characters ring true. She has a remarkable able to imagine the erotic imagination and physical experiences of a man, while clinging to the female version of eroticism at the same time. This is unique and, simply, a gift.

There are times where the book gets bogged down in some detail (usually about logging practices in the Northwest) and I found the beginning a little slow-moving. I was afraid it was going to tread over much-trodden-upon ground with its plot. It didn't.

The second half of the book MOVES; it is hard to put down and it haunts you.

Strong on atmosphere, gifted in its erotic atmospherics and complexity, this book is a keeper. You will find yourself recommending it to anyone with a well-developed brain, love of the erotic, and love of contemporary literature.

I am enormously impressed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and tender, March 25, 2006

By 

Alan "Dr. Alan" (Bucks County, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clearcut (Paperback)

I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction, but this was recommended by a good friend. It's a beautiful and compelling story of three characters who form an odd sort of boy-girl-boy romantic triangle that challenges each of them in unexpected ways. Although there is clearly a "main character" each story comes through clearly. She really takes us inside their head in a way that never relies on easy conventions. The story is funny, sad, moving and Shengold's talent in drawing us into the lives of these three wayward people lost in their search for happiness kept me wanting to know more about them. There is an exciting edginess in the emotional twists and turns of the book that feels, all to sadly, very much like that thing called "life"