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White Nights in Split Town City Paperback – August 9, 2016

by Annie DeWitt (Author)

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Both coming-of-age story and cautionary tale. In her mother's absence, Jean is torn between the adult world and her surreal fantasies of escape as she and Fender build a fort to survey the rumors of their town.

Annie DeWitt is a fiction writer, essayist, and critic. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University School of the Arts. She teaches in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in Granta, the Believer, Tin House, Guernica, Esquire, NOON (where an excerpt of this novel first appeared), BOMB, Electric Literature, and the American Reader, among others. Her story "Influence," which first appeared in Esquire's Napkin Fiction Project, was recently anthologized in Short: An International Anthology, edited by Alan Ziegler (Persea, 2014). DeWitt was a co-founding editor of Gigantic, a literary journal of short prose and art carried throughout the United States and abroad. She currently pens a bimonthly nonfiction column about art, literature, film and criticism for the Believer, called "Various Paradigms."

Print length

300 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tyrant Books
Publication date

August 9, 2016
Reading age

13 - 17 years
Dimensions

5.75 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0991360842
ISBN-13

978-0991360840
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Claire Vaye Watkins
368
Hardcover
73 offers from $3.91
Matt Bell
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"White Nights is the study of a failing family—how it is dismantled from within, how it is threatened by the world outside. DeWitt steers headlong into the most intimate and uncomfortable aspects of this disintegration." –BookForum

"DeWitt's novel is a powerful and haunting debut from an author who has an ear for lyricism and an eye on what is hidden just beneath the surface." –Publishers Weekly

"A stunning achievement that feels like a new classic in the coming of age genre, pushing the usual boundaries with every exact and envisaging sentence." –Electric Literature

"Wild, often violent, and jarringly beautiful." –Interview Magazine

"White Nights in Split Town City is the story of what it means to feel desired and plugged in to what surrounds us, and how this informs our identities from a very, young age." –Los Angeles Review of Books

"Annie DeWitt’s work represents a sort of minimalism comparable to such writers as Amy Hempel and Christine Schutt." –The Believer

"DeWitt’s first 'slender storm of a novel' White Nights in Split Town City lands on the scene with a fury worthy of a cowboy western." –The Millions

"White Nights is the study of a failing family―how it is dismantled from within, how it is threatened by the world outside. DeWitt steers headlong into the most intimate and uncomfortable aspects of this disintegration." –BookForum

"DeWitt's novel is a powerful and haunting debut from an author who has an ear for lyricism and an eye on what is hidden just beneath the surface." –Publishers Weekly

"A stunning achievement that feels like a new classic in the coming of age genre, pushing the usual boundaries with every exact and envisaging sentence." –Electric Literature

"Wild, often violent, and jarringly beautiful." –Interview Magazine

"White Nights in Split Town City is the story of what it means to feel desired and plugged in to what surrounds us, and how this informs our identities from a very, young age." –Los Angeles Review of Books

"Annie DeWitt’s work represents a sort of minimalism comparable to such writers as Amy Hempel and Christine Schutt." –The Believer

"DeWitt’s first 'slender storm of a novel' White Nights in Split Town City lands on the scene with a fury worthy of a cowboy western." –The Millions

About the Author

Annie DeWitt is a fiction writer, essayist and critic. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from Columbia School of The Arts. She teaches in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Believer, Tin House, Guernica, Esquire, NOON (where an excerpt of this novel first appeared), BOMB, Electric Literature, and The American Reader, amongst others. Her story, “Influence,” which first appeared in Esquire’s Napkin Fiction Project was recently anthologized in Short: An International Anthology, edited by Alan Ziegler (Persea, 2014). DeWitt was a co-founding editor of Gigantic, a literary journal of short prose and art carried throughout the U.S. and abroad. She currently pens a bimonthly nonfiction column about art, literature, film and criticism for The Believer, called “Various Paradigms.”

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tyrant Books (August 9, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0991360842
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0991360840
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 - 17 years
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,968,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,107 in Parenting Teenagers (Books)
- #22,419 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #114,701 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
9 ratings

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Kate194

Two Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 22, 2016

Verified Purchase

Very hard to follow, did not finish.

One person found this helpful

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Ra

Best Book I Read All Year

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 26, 2016

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White Nights in Split Town City is a gripping and unique coming-of-age tale about a daring 12-year old, Jean, a deeply affecting character you will love and want to protect while knowing she wouldn't let anyone get in her way . She's tough, bold, and drawn to dangers large and small. The novel is set firmly in the 90's and its big events and anxieties seep into her world as she burrows through it. As her family falls apart, set sets off on adventures and takes on questionable responsibilities in her neighborhood, which is really just a long dirt road, the last one in her town. The writing is both lush and spare-some of the most surprising and beautiful I've encountered. I underlined many sentences and read them again and again because DeWitt's phrasing is so particular and special. This book is mysterious, haunting, tragressive, and lyrical. Reading it, I had the experience I've had with my favorite novels-I felt like I'd been given a gift, one that I was slowly unwrapping, and will continue to cherish because I know each read will reveal something new.

5 people found this helpful

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SVC

Boring nights in a dusty town

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 8, 2017

Verified Purchase

I so much wanted to love this book. Truthfully, I was bored. Kept reading passages over because they made so little impression that I'd forgotten reading them before. The many characters have as much life and depth as marionettes. Jean, the protagonist, does nothing to make the reader care about her, and the extremely slim narrative arc doesn't change her. It reads like it takes place in some dusty end of the road state south of the Mason-Dixon Line, so the fact that it's set in Massachusetts is jarring. The author continually misuses 'I' and 'me' or else she thinks it makes Jean appealing, which it doesn't. And who edited this book??? 'Wreak' instead of 'reek', 'broach' for 'brooch', the list goes on. I also felt the writer struggle to be poetic, yearn to be minimalist, try to use words in magical new ways, but all I felt was the straining as they missed their marks. I finish every book I start...I feel I owe it to the writer, but short as this one was, it took a week to slog through.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bob D.

Demands your attention, but worth the effort

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

A beguiling combination of vividly descriptive prose, achingly wistful nostalgia and a frighteningly perceptive protagonist. Reading this after weeks on a steady diet of modern mysteries was like switching from a Cadillac on a flat interstate to a Ducati on an twisty mountain road: it snaps you abruptly out of your comfort zone and demands your energy and attention. Neither plotting nor pacing are entirely conventional, and it may take some effort to fall into the book's unique groove, but readers who hang on for the ride will be richly rewarded for their effort. A thought-provoking, evocative and beautiful book.

3 people found this helpful

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David Seaman

A Masterpiece: We Come of Age like a re-birth

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 28, 2016

REVIEW: White Nights in Split Town City

A masterpiece; We all come of age many times in one life

We've all lived through that confusing and frightening part of life that is the transition into scrutinizing the adult world. We knew back then to remain quiet; to observe, comparing situation with situation to try to understand that elusive club that is adulthood from which we were so vehemently banned. Yet there were ways around it and even in the microcosm of everyone's childhood town there is plenty to see and learn. Annie DeWitt takes us back more vividly than any writer before her in "White Nights In Split Town City." This short tour de force captures the innocence, excitement and then wisdom of a thirteen year old girl named Jean who lives with her Father and Mother (this is what she calls them) and her younger sister, known only as Birdie. Their house, called "Bottom Feeder" sits on five acres of land at the very edge of a small town. The road is unpaved, at least for now; the novel always stresses that life moves forward, nothing stays the same. It is 1990.
There's something very theatrical about this novel. It's brilliantly atypical with Fewer pages than many novels yet it is an epic. The chapters are like scenes; sections within are like movements; motifs introduced then developed. DeWitt's descriptions of her time at the piano are a glimpse into the mind of the author. Descriptions and analogies bring such truth so that every emotion Jean feels is described freshly making it real and personal to the reader and whether male or female we're taken back to that summer in which we were urged out of childhood.
The novel's first half is shadowed by a pregnant nimbus cloud while introducing the normal routine of Jean's life. She's a bright, quiet girl who notices everything as she tip-toes through a world that isn't as familiar as it once was. The metaphoric clouds build, raising each stake for her and for us. Throughout each sentence we feel as though Jean is leading us by hand down each risky path. There are many plot points, all of equal weight and all of which direct Jean's awareness and cause her to begin dipping her toes into life's waters edge. She eventually immerses herself, mostly unnoticed and quite literally. (A night swim with a boy in a neighbor's pool; remember that?) The danger we feel as a reader is stronger for parents as memories are recovered and DeWitt's ability to hit the truth acts as a reminder to us of our own youthful risks so much as to keep us in a perpetual state of suspense because we know that something is coming. We fear for our own children. (It's Ten O'Clock. Do you know where your children are?) This pushes the stakes higher yet we can't yet define one specific plot point about which to focus. So we are wary of them all, as they come at us with the speed, confusion and force that they come at Jean. This only adds to our anxiety and even to Jean's. We just don't know which or what. There's peril and potential destruction behind every one of Jean's interactions. Jean is a girl who gives everyone a fair shake, regardless of small town rumors and reputations. Her value judgements come after deep scrutiny and earned pain.
At some point it literally begins to rain and then all hell breaks loose, as promised, approaching from everywhere. And it falls all at once in copious, painful ways. Now Jean not only experiences her own disappointments but she views her support system differently-more human. She sees that adults are fragile and flawed. And she is witness to some very real disasters while learning of the cycle of life and developing new relationships with her familiar family whom she sees differently than ever before. This is the point when the magic of childhood dissipates. As this deluge falls from the sky we are faced with the first horrifying experience which is made more painful because she is aware that a low IQ male is watching. For that moment he represents the whole town, who watches everything. Except that his innocence and simplicity give the scene confusion so we're not at all sure how to feel. We just feel changed.
And so does Jean.
Annie DeWitt manages, with four short pages at the end, to lift us. Like Wally Lamb, we are left with the possibility of hope because life never gives more than that. Yet life goes on.
DeWitt's writing can't be compared to other authors. No one has written like she. Shirley Jackson shared the ability to pack an emotional experience into a single sentence. Barbara Kingsolver shares her breadth of vocabulary both literate and vernacular. William Styron was also able to choose words that both caress and crush the heart. It takes remarkable skill to move your audience with a modicum of words that carry so many emotions. It does not mean that this is a fast, one evening read. DeWitt's short fiction is widely published and honored so we know, like Sondheim, that no two works are the same. This variation in style is another comparison to how "White Nights in Split Town City" has the delicacy and detail of a Sonata.
Annie DeWitt's "White Nights in Split Town City" is the most remarkable literary work to be published in decades. An author like DeWitt appears less than once a generation and for a premier novel she surpasses hundreds of highly successful authors with many books and many years on her. (Based on the author's photo, DeWitt is closer to Jean's age than middle age.) This novel is a must for everyone. Like Shirley Jackson or Sinclair Lewis, you'll re-read this over and over and because of your life experiences and our tendency to read a sentence quickly the novel will change you and move you with each reading. The novel itself will change. As far as the myriad of miracles in this massive novella, You'll be more satisfied to discover those on your own. Look for Easter Eggs, try to decide where this town may be located before page 125 as you'll be certain it's based on your own hometown; the town and the collected residents are two very important characters.
Annie DeWitt is an author to follow closely. "White Nights In Split town City" isn't a book. It is literature.

3 people found this helpful

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Taylor Larsen

Gorgeous

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 28, 2016

An absolutely beautiful book--every word has meaning and the setting and characters are so well-developed. This is such a lovely and elegant book. I found it haunting. A great read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 11, 2017

Very smart writing. The plot carries you along but the complexity of the characters will stay with you.

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