Well [Paperback]

Matthew McIntosh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2004

Well marks the astonishing debut of an author with a singular and unflinching voice and vision. The denizens of this brilliant novel are boxers, bartenders, and data-entry technicians, fishermen, mothers, and exotic dancers, would-be kings and queens of the punk rock scene, sparemen and gunmen and soon-to-be dead men. What binds them is the Well-that dark barren region of the human heart and mind. Whether desperately alone or struggling to come together, they grapple with dangerous compulsions and heartrending afflictions, searching for relief, transcendence, or a vehicle up into the light they know must exist. They search in sex, drugs, and violence, and in visions of apocalypse and creation, dreams of angels and killers and local sports championships. Compact, finely wrought, and powerfully charged, Well is a mesmerizing tour de force that will establish Matthew McIntosh as a bold and progressive new voice of American fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his debut novel Well, Matthew McIntosh has produced an impressive, unsettling portrait of the inhabitants of Federal Way, Washington, a blue-collar suburb of Seattle. This book is less a novel than a collage of voices (mostly first-person, sometimes disembodied) unified by their disparate attempts to overcome (or at least come to terms with) physical and emotional pain, addiction, loss, dysfunctional and withering relationships, and other common, but intensely personal, problems. Most striking is that these citizens are acutely aware of their flaws, describing their most intimate thoughts and stories with a twinge of sadness, as if confessing--but not making excuses--for their actions. Some are hopeful, most are resigned, and there is a sense of entrapment among the characters, a realization that they may not have the strength, patience or even a clue how to change for the better. They tell us their strange dreams, fantasies, describe fleeting feelings of self-control.

Of the few, more traditional short stories, "Fishboy" is strongest, wherein a high-school student realizes finally that his obsession with a classmate is unhealthy. In "Gunman," McIntosh creates a faux news report of a bus driver's random shooting, containing a succinct elucidation of what drives these folks to speak: "Why do these things happen? What is it that allows them to happen? We wonder if there is a higher order to the universe. We wonder if there is a higher order to our world, at least. We report that our world is falling apart. And we report that we are falling apart." With the proof in the writing, not the ambitiousness or media fanfare, Well is a hauntingly memorable book from a refreshing, new voice. --Michael Ferch --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

"I think something inside of her broke, whatever that string is that holds people together, it snapped." "That string" is the leitmotif of this unusual, dark debut novel with an ensemble cast. McIntosh assembles different episodes and voices to create an impressionistic tableau of Federal Way, Washington, a blue-collar town facing the loss of blue-collar jobs and culture. McIntosh's characters are introduced in first-person testimonies and third-person sketches that build matter-of-factly and then trail off ambiguously, like entries in a police blotter-if the police blotter were written by Samuel Beckett. They lead lives of quiet despair, punctuated by bursts of violence, benders and bad sex. Physical pain harries many of the characters, madness others, and almost all are cursed with deteriorating personal relationships. Among the most moving episodes is a long chapter, "Fishboy," narrated by Will, a student at a small college in Nebraska who is studying fisheries. The story flashes back to his dangerous obsession with a classmate, Emily Swanson, and his father leaving his mother. Another beautifully executed sequence, "Border," shows how the suicide of an ex-boxer, Jim, is viewed by his sister-in-law, his brother, his buddies, a former opponent and his mother's friends. The sustained glide from voice to voice is virtuosic, and the writing is dogged-it never gets literary; it digs through the clich‚s and the usual inarticulateness of the stories people tell in bars and grocery store lines; and it stumbles on diamonds in the rough everywhere. McIntosh is only 26, but he is already an artful registrar of the heart's lower frequencies.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (June 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802141439
• ISBN-13: 978-0802141439
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,260,576 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 Modern color / modern love, February 12, 2009

By 

Davis-Vautrin (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Well (Paperback)

A rare contemporary novel that speaks to a contemporary reader on a profoundly human level, without formulaic politics, or formulaic psychology, or condescension, or cuteness, or formulaic humanity, but with the voice of an author who, like a good doctor, cares genuinely about some very sick patients, his characters, not even despite but because of their flaws. Compared to Selby and Carver by some, this may be especially so to the extent that each of them shows traces of Dubliners, as McIntosh distinguishes himself with characters that could really be anyone at all, and are, though of a very particular time and place. Others have synopsized the plot and style, so there is no need to repeat. Suffice to say, the author manifests a sophistication and subtlety of human study well beyond his young years, and this reader has not been as deeply touched by contemporary fiction in a long time, when contemporary meant something else entirely.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something of a Masterpiece, July 16, 2003

By 

Adrift in Suburbia (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Well (Hardcover)

"Well" is a hard-earned marvel, and Matt McIntosh is a nothing less than a prodigy. His book focuses on a tapestry of broken lives in Federal Way, Washington, outside of Seattle, drawn together by the common ailments of discontentment, disillusionment, and a yearning for some small redemption. The chapter (or story) "Fishboy," about a young man suffering from the break-up of his family, has a raw, wrenching power like something I've rarely encountered in contemporary fiction, somewhat like the stories in Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son," but wholly Matt McIntosh's, wholly unique. His work has a kind of poetic integrity that signals a rare talent, a new voice.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Well" done, October 3, 2003

By 

Stephen M. John "magnoliasteve" (Federal Way, Wa United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Well (Hardcover)

This book is a lot of things. It's depressing, it's sad and it's dark. It's funny, it's real and it's honest. And most of all, it's very hard to put down. Matthew McIntosh is a 26 year old son of a preacher who spent time in London and California before landing in a little suburb of Seattle called Federal Way, the setting for the book. The book follows the lives and relationships of many people who are lost, despondent, disturbed, and struggling to just get through one more day. This is a brutally frank snapshot of people that most of us of hope we never meet and pray we never become. We see them on street corners, in alleys, in parks and sometimes right next door, though we pretend to not notice and hope to God they don't notice us. McIntosh's writing style is unconventional and compelling at the same time. It is refreshingly (and shockingly) different.