A grimly powerful hybrid: provocative literary fiction crossed with a propulsive thriller' - Kirkus Review
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation - as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love - that arises from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend and former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.
'. . . prying the lid off a rusted can of failed hope and small-town secrets. . . his taut, direct prose strikes the perfect tone for this kaleidoscope of fractured dreams. . . honest and unflinching storytelling.' - Amazon, Book of the Month
'American Rust is both darkly disturbing and richly compelling. . . signals the arrival of a new voice in American letters.' - Patricia Cornwell
'With its strong narrative engine and understated social insight, American Rust is reminiscent of the best of Robert Stone and Russell Banks. Author Philipp Meyer locates the heart of his working class characters without false sentiment or condescension, and their world is artfully described.' - George Pelecanos
'. . . a brilliantly realised story that is a painful rendition of the reality being played out. . . American Rust presents the human effects of our industrial decline more powerfully than any newspaper editorial or TV special report. Philipp Meyer is a fine writer, and he has nailed a difficult story.' - Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News
'An engrossing drama.' - Marie Claire
A grimly powerful hybrid: provocative literary fiction crossed with a propulsive thriller' - Kirkus Review
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation - as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love - that arises from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend and former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.
'. . . prying the lid off a rusted can of failed hope and small-town secrets. . . his taut, direct prose strikes the perfect tone for this kaleidoscope of fractured dreams. . . honest and unflinching storytelling.' - Amazon, Book of the Month
'American Rust is both darkly disturbing and richly compelling. . . signals the arrival of a new voice in American letters.' - Patricia Cornwell
'With its strong narrative engine and understated social insight, American Rust is reminiscent of the best of Robert Stone and Russell Banks. Author Philipp Meyer locates the heart of his working class characters without false sentiment or condescension, and their world is artfully described.' - George Pelecanos
'. . . a brilliantly realised story that is a painful rendition of the reality being played out. . . American Rust presents the human effects of our industrial decline more powerfully than any newspaper editorial or TV special report. Philipp Meyer is a fine writer, and he has nailed a difficult story.' - Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News
'An engrossing drama.' - Marie Claire
Critiques-
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September 15, 2008
In his unrelentingly downbeat debut, Meyer offers up a character-driven near-noir set in Buell, a dying Pennsylvania steel town, where aimless friends Billy Poe and Isaac English are trapped by economic and personal circumstance. Just before their halfhearted escape to California, Isaac accidentally kills a transient who tries to rob Poe. The boys return to the crime scene the next day with plans to cover up the crime, setting the plot in motion. Poe is soon under suspicion, and Isaac, distraught after discovering Poe has been carrying on a relationship with Isaac’s sister, Lee, sets off for California alone. Meanwhile, Poe’s mother, Grace, mourns her own lost opportunities, broods over her son and pines for her on-again-off-again love, the local sheriff. A fully realized tragic heroine, Grace is the poignant thrust of the novel, embodying enough rural tragedy to nearly atone for the novel’s weakness: a sense that some of the plot mechanics are arbitrary. Still, Meyer has a thrilling eye for failed dreams and writes uncommonly tense scenes of violence, and in the character of Grace creates a woeful heroine. Fans of Cormac McCarthy or Dennis Lehane will find in Meyer an author worth watching.
