Ever since he was a boy, Daniel Suppleton has been deathly afraid of hurricanes, which he fears will arrive suddenly and reduce everyone he knows and loves to trembling skeletons. Retreating to live in a tipi in the woods, Daniel battles demons real and imagined. As his ex-wife, Karen, frantically searches for him, the long-awaited hurricane finally hits, and Daniel must find a way to save them both. Haunting, mesmerizing, and beautifully written, Daniel Fights a Hurricane is an affecting, original novel of love and loss, marriage and friendship, by a rising young talent.
Daniel Fights a Hurricane: A Novel
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“[Daniel Fights a Hurricane] reads like if Franz Kafka and Anne Carson got together and re-wrote The Wizard of Oz, with occasional in-text illustrations by Dave Eggers. . . . A surreal and playful postmodern fable about an epic struggle against a villainous force-of-nature, with a surprisingly human love story of intriguing complexity.”
—W magazine
“Filled with surreal, hallucinogenic imagery ranging from the terrifying to the hilarious.”
—The Awl
“A wild book full of brain-consuming storms and jacked-up teeth and mysterious tigers and breakfast at McDonald’s. While so many other books and movies these days seem to be afraid of their own fantasies, Shane Jones goes for the throat. Fans of his previous novel, Light Boxes, or who like Donald Antrim or Kelly Link or, I don’t know, Buñuel, can expect a black, fun freakshow.”
—Vice
“A joy to read. . . . Gentle, quirky and ultimately redeeming. . . . A marvelous melding of metaphor and reality.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Shane Jones’ latest novel Daniel Fights a Hurrican magnetizes the eye to its watercolor collision course. It’s a lighthearted, good-natured tragedy powdered with bubbles, feathers, shaggy-haired rock gardens and folded kangaroos. It’s playful enough to hold court in the camp of anti-pretentiousness, yet so sad and demented that even the anthropomorphic ‘bears throwing acorns like grenades at squirrels’ add an air of menace.”
—The Tottenville Review
“In Shane Jones’ surreal second novel, Daniel is a pipeline worker with a lifelong fear of hurricanes, who slips in and out of reality as he endeavors to fight the threat they pose to his town. Playful and dreamlike, the true, the imagined and the truly-imagined swirl together to create, yes, a hurricane of a world that will suck you in and offer little hope of escape.”
—Flavorpill, “10 New Must Reads for July”
“A bewitching new novel. . . . It’s Jones’s juxtaposition of the fantastical and, say, a woman polishing off a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin that makes his work feel so unique.” —Mallory Rice, NYLON
“Daniel Fights a Hurricane is a wry, beautiful, deeply felt book full of bewitching prose. Shane Jones is a serious player in the world of playfully serious fiction. Better start reading him now.”
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Ask
“Shane Jones takes the strands of dreams and reality and combines them so inextricably that it forms the DNA of an entirely new and wonderful species. Daniel Fights a Hurricane is an awe-inspiring novel, and I cannot imagine another author who could create this unique and heartbreaking object.”
—Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
“A dream in the land of Brautigan written on the interior of a welding mask for proper pipemaking.”
—Jesse Ball, author of The Curfew and Samedi the Deafness
“A quietly deft and linguistically playful book about the struggle between so-called reality and the realities of the imagination. Daniel Fights a Hurricane is about the way realities cross, collide and twine around each other, and the lives that are wounded by being caught in between.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Fugue State
“Shane Jones's Daniel Fights a Hurricane is a hypercolor kind of dream-machine. Images of McMuffins morph to underwater cities morph to dream salesmen to brutal weather that can destroy the world itself. In midst of such imagination is an even richer field of complex emotion, collaged from the more abstract and terrifying ways that line our days. Here is a work that invents its own fundamental image, logic, and function, and somehow makes it feel like our new electric human skin.”
—Blake Butler, author of Scorch Atlas and Nothing
“We were completely blown away by Shane Jones’s 2010 debut novel Light Boxes, a surreal, fabulistic tale of a village revolting against its never-ending February, so we couldn’t be more excited for his sophomore novel, which he describes as ‘a novel of hallucinations.’ Sounds dreamy.”
—Flavorpill, Most Anticipated Books of 2012
About the Author
Shane Jones (b. 1980) is the author of the novel Light Boxes, which was named an NPR Best Book of 2010. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including LIT, New York Tyrant, Fairy Tale Review, and the Milan Review. He lives in upstate New York.
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More About the Author
Shane Jones (b. 1980) lives in upstate New York. His first novel, Light Boxes, was originally published by Publishing Genius Press in a print run of 500 copies in 2009. The novel was reviewed widely, the film option purchased by Spike Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, Adaptation), and the book was reprinted by Penguin Group in 2010. Light Boxes has been translated in eight languages and was named an NPR best book of the year. In August of 2012 Penguin released a new novel, Daniel Fights a Hurricane. Shane is also the author of the novella The Failure Six.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For the uninitiated, "blague" is French for "joke." I use this phrase in my review title, because this book reminds me of Donald Barthelme's novel Snow White wherein his characters call for more blague--more silliness.
This absurdity is something that Daniel Fights The Hurricane has in spades. The book is absolutely bonkers. The narrative is a hallucinatory blend of realism and the down-right strange with some of the most beautifully rendered comparisons I've read in recent fiction.
I would not recommend this novel for readers who need linear/traditional plot structure to enjoy a book. But, if you enjoy the postmodern (esp. Barthelme's collage work or Jones' Light Boxes) and the limits that fiction can push, then you'll really dig this novel.
Also, get this one in paper--the jacket art is great and there are all kinds of typographical tricks and illustrations that probably wouldn't translate too well in e-book format.
This absurdity is something that Daniel Fights The Hurricane has in spades. The book is absolutely bonkers. The narrative is a hallucinatory blend of realism and the down-right strange with some of the most beautifully rendered comparisons I've read in recent fiction.
I would not recommend this novel for readers who need linear/traditional plot structure to enjoy a book. But, if you enjoy the postmodern (esp. Barthelme's collage work or Jones' Light Boxes) and the limits that fiction can push, then you'll really dig this novel.
Also, get this one in paper--the jacket art is great and there are all kinds of typographical tricks and illustrations that probably wouldn't translate too well in e-book format.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Neal Hitch
Format:Paperback
This may be the most interesting book I've read since Poe's, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim of Nantucket." Nobody makes it easier to believe nonsense than Shane Jones (not even Lewis Carol). What's more, nobody has the power to create emotion out of nonsense like Shane Jones does.
Perhaps the chapter in the book that most captures Jones' style of writing is the one titled "Box built from green pipes." to which the overwhelming theme is this: there is no rhyme or reason - sometimes there is just beauty for the sake of beauty.
The choppy, scattered prose is vaguely reminiscent of "The book of Jonah." The bible story describes Jona being swallowed by a whale, all in one sentence. In the same way, Jones can say, "they are now living underwater in the pipes," and make it completely believable and compulsive to read. That's just how it is. There are no questions asked.
At first glance, the book may seem to be a story about a man who's mind is stuck in between reality and fantasy, but after cracking open the book the reader will soon discover that the novel is actually a story about Daniel's wife.
The bulk of the book is writen in Daniel's perspective: a mix of reality that bleeds into Daniel's nonsensical, make believe world. Shorter sections, written in Daniel's wife's (Karen) perspective are interjected into the middle of those parts. These sections anchor the story in reality and give depth and emotion to the the silly and fun bits.
The sharp stability of Karen, in contrast to Daniel's imaginary world, reminds the reader of the sadness that Daniel's mind is deteriorating and that "Daniel Fights a Hurricane" is, in reality, a tragedy.
Perhaps the chapter in the book that most captures Jones' style of writing is the one titled "Box built from green pipes." to which the overwhelming theme is this: there is no rhyme or reason - sometimes there is just beauty for the sake of beauty.
The choppy, scattered prose is vaguely reminiscent of "The book of Jonah." The bible story describes Jona being swallowed by a whale, all in one sentence. In the same way, Jones can say, "they are now living underwater in the pipes," and make it completely believable and compulsive to read. That's just how it is. There are no questions asked.
At first glance, the book may seem to be a story about a man who's mind is stuck in between reality and fantasy, but after cracking open the book the reader will soon discover that the novel is actually a story about Daniel's wife.
The bulk of the book is writen in Daniel's perspective: a mix of reality that bleeds into Daniel's nonsensical, make believe world. Shorter sections, written in Daniel's wife's (Karen) perspective are interjected into the middle of those parts. These sections anchor the story in reality and give depth and emotion to the the silly and fun bits.
The sharp stability of Karen, in contrast to Daniel's imaginary world, reminds the reader of the sadness that Daniel's mind is deteriorating and that "Daniel Fights a Hurricane" is, in reality, a tragedy.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I enjoy graphic novels. Often they have a kind of honesty that I like. Despite its copyright date, this one did not disappoint.
