Into the Great Wide Open [Hardcover]

Kevin Canty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1996

Building on the success of A Stranger in This World, the widely praised collection of stories that was one of the most exciting literary debuts of recent years, Kevin Canty has written a blistering, unforgettable first novel. Set in the sprawl of suburbia, with its shattered families and hollow lives, Into the Great Wide Open is the story of two young people fleeing their families' emotional abandonment to find refuge in each other.

Smart but scarred, Kenny Kolodny yearns to awake from the nightmare of his smashed-up family: his mother is in an institution and forever away; his father is an abusive alcoholic; his brother lives abroad. Seventeen and alone, he hangs on the periphery of his world, until he makes a passionate connection with the troubled, beautiful, fiercely independent Junie Williamson. Kenny discovers in their highly charged, intensely erotic relationship a reality--and a capacity for caring--he has not known before.

In prose startling for its diamond-hard edges and bravura lyricism, Kevin Canty revives the heady carnival of adolescence, evoking its confusing emotional landscape and its heightened sensuality, too soon lost. Into the Great Wide Open is a haunting, mesmerizing novel by a writer of deep sensitivity and undeniable talent.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Opposites attract in this story of young lovers who find that they aren't so opposite at all. A religious youth retreat serves as the meeting place for 17-year-olds Kenny Kolodny and Junie Williamson. Kenny's mother is a mental patient and his father is a raging alcoholic. Junie's are successful professionals. While Kenny is a pot smoker who lives in a filthy apartment and drives a beat-up station wagon, Junie lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the suburbs and drives a bright red Honda Accord. But Junie has seen her own hard times and has just returned from a stay in a psychiatric hospital. The two find they share many of the same insecurities, doubts, and troubles, and as they struggle with feelings of detachment from the world, they create a safe place in which to cross into adulthood together.

From Publishers Weekly

As he demonstrated in his praised short-story collection, A Stranger in This World, Canty has a gift for expressing the emotions of lonely, unmoored people. In this tensely controlled and keenly observed first novel, he evokes the bliss, uncertainty and pain of teenage love in an age of sexual freedom, drugs and parental irresponsibility. The protagonist, Kenny Kolodny, is a bright 17-year-old who smokes pot, neglects his schoolwork and strives to hide his bewilderment and vulnerability. Kenny's parents are divorced. His mother is in a mental institution; his father, with whom Kenny lives in a seedy apartment in Washington, D.C., is an abusive alcoholic. Forced to cope with his father's rages, and later to care for him after he has a stroke, Kenny knows he's been robbed of his childhood. What's worse, he can't imagine any future for himself. Kenny recognizes a similarly troubled soul in Junie Williamson, whose two suicide attempts reflect the kind of dysfunctional family life that can occur in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the affluent suburbs. Though Kenny knows he's considered socially inferior to the Williamsons, he also knows that Junie is "damaged goods" and thus perhaps not utterly unattainable. To his surprise, he feels genuine love for her, and she for him, and for a while they connect deeply. But their breakup is as inevitable as Kenny's persistent sense of failure. There is remarkable integrity in Canty's depiction of adolescents' secret erotic lives, and of their perceived lack of control that even sexual intimacy does not dispel. Though this is a somber story, there are no cheap effects or melodramatic developments. Canty never forces its heartbreaking truths, which he expresses with elegant restraint and unflinching honesty. First serial to D magazine; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; 1st edition (July 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385473885
• ISBN-13: 978-0385473880
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,619,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When you feel like the best part of you is in someone else:, May 20, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Great Wide Open (Hardcover)

Read this book. It describes everything you couldn't when you first realized that love wouldn't save you from becoming less than you had hoped you'd become - from the monumental boredom of adulthood. The story stays with you long after you've finished it - in the same way Canty's protagonist is haunted by the feeling that the truest part of himself was in someone else, and entirely behind him. If you read books to be changed by them this one won't disappoint you. It's a gift from Kevin Canty.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't wait for his next novel!, August 15, 2001

By 

Greta (Apple Valley, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Great Wide Open (Paperback)

Canty's lyrical style and raw emotional text made me yearn for more of this book. I was completely absorbed and in awe of the authentic characters, Kenny and Junie. This is a must read - anyone who had a first young love will be compelled by the reality of Canty's emotional language. He beautifully puts into words the thoughts and feelings one had at that tender age. I liked the way that the book didn't neatly tie up all the loose ends or answer all the questions about the characters. It leads one to form one's own judgement. I have recommended this book to all my friends.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ahh Youth!, October 5, 1998

By 

Librarian (Southfield, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Into the Great Wide Open (Hardcover)

While it took me a little while to get into the characters, I grew to care about Kenny and Junie. Junie was annoying at first, with her insecurites and her "come here, go away" attitude. Actually, she was rather annoying through the whole novel. But the book is a successful first attempt and did bring back many of the emotions and fears that I recall from my own intense high school romance.