Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories [Paperback]

Wells Tower (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 2, 2010

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE

 

Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs.  A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car's windshield doesn't match her own.  Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods.  A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl.  Wells Tower's version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons.  With electric prose and savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a profound new collection of stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The stories in this outstanding debut collection explore the troubled relationships of men down on their luck, in failed marriages, estranged from family, caught in imbroglios between sons and their fathers and stepfathers, and even, in Wild America, the subtle and ferocious competition between teenage girls. Bob Monroe, the protagonist of The Brown Coast, loses his job, his inheritance and his wife after the death of his father. The narrator of Down Through the Valley, meanwhile, is persuaded to drive his ex-wife's boyfriend home from an ashram after he injures himself. In Leopard, the threat of a missing pet leopard lurking in the woods hints at a troubled 11-year-old's rage toward his stepfather. The narrator of Down Through the Valley has a savage freak-out that terrifies him. The strange and magnificent title story, in which Vikings set off again toward an oft-raided island, beautifully ties the collection together in its heartbreaking final paragraph. Tower's uncommon mastery of tone and wide-ranging sympathy creates a fine tension between wry humor and the primal rage that seethes just below the surface of each of his characters. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Critics described this collection as visceral, contemplative, and inappropriately side-splitting, and were captivated by tales of men and their roles as fathers, stepfathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and ex-husbands (only one story featured a female protagonist). Reviewers further marveled at Tower’s ability to take readers from gut-clutching hilarity to gloomy introspection and back again in compact, descriptive language. Although critics disagreed about which stories were the best, only the Boston Globe cited “weaker,” “choppy,” and “overlong” entries. Overall, Tower has created a stunning collection of stories that will linger in the hearts and minds of readers.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1 Reprint edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312429290
• ISBN-13: 978-0312429294
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wells Tower's short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars marvelous and original language and situations March 20, 2009

By michael carroll

Format:Hardcover

I started to read this book skeptically, but from the first story found myself completely disarmed. My favorite stories are "Retreat" and "Wild America," both gorgeously unexpected treatments of their subjects (in the first, sibling relationships, and in the second adolescent girls and sexual discovery). Nothing I could say about the way Wells Tower goes into his stories could possibly prepare you for the surprising pleasures of his language. He's always funny without sneering or being self-satisfied in his conclusions regarding this big messy thing, "American culture." He's sly and humble. But his sentences--the core of any literary enterprise as far as I'm concerned--are at the crux of his art. Carefully wrought, they approximate the uniqueness and the varieties of personal experience. And did I mention how funny he is? Anyone who cares about word choice or a fresh eye trained on the observations he makes (in the tradition of Joy Williams or Richard Yates, say) will read them aloud more than once and chuckle. Beautiful.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay...just okay April 2, 2010

By Billy Pilgrim

Format:Paperback

Based on the reviews I'd read, I was expecting the next coming of Cheever or Carver. Well...not exactly. Tower may show promise, but he's not there yet. Of these nine stories, I'd say about two ("Leopard" and the title story) were memorable or compelling. The rest, despite being technically accomplished and polished, fell flat. If you look at early Updike, you see a talented writer, however raw, writing with feeling about people and situations that he knows intimately. Here, however, the results feel forced, and you get vague characters, stories that don't seem finished, and dialogue that's often stilted and clumsy. At one point, Tower describes the color of a lake as being like "new blue jeans". Huh? That's a description that means nothing, and stopping to think about it took me out of the story. Similarly, in "Retreat", two brothers have a relationship that we're told is strained, yet the action that takes place does nothing to resolve or explain that situation, and shines no light on the characters themselves. You get a lot of incidental male-ness (hunting, field dressing, carpentry, pick-up trucks) that isn't illuminating, doesn't advance the story, and feels extraneous. And not once, but twice, in two separate stories, he uses wand as a verb...a nice trick, but nothing more. I will say this, though: the title story is well-written, well-paced, satisfying, original, and full of creativity. If only more were like it.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing writing; haunting and memorable. Tough to take though. July 1, 2009

By L. Nord

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is amazing writing; haunting and memorable. I eventually had to put the book down though; I couldn't take that much pain time and again in so short a period.