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The New Valley
by Josh Weil
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$22.00 |
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$7.04 (32%) |
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Hardcover
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN13: 9780802118912
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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The linked novellas that comprise Josh Weil’s masterful debut bring us into America’s remote, unforgiving backcountry, and delicately unveil the private worlds of three very different men as they confront love, loss, and their own personal demons.
Set in the hardscrabble hill country between West Virginia and Virginia, The New Valley is populated by characters striving to forge new lives in the absence of those they have loved. Told in three varied and distinct voices—from a soft-spoken beef farmer struggling to hold himself together after his dad’s suicide; to a health-obsessed single father desperate to control his reckless, overweight daughter; to a mildly retarded man who falls for a married woman intent on using him in a scheme that wounds them both—each novella is a vivid examination of Weil’s uniquely romanticized relationships. As the men struggle against grief, solitude, and fixation, their desperation leads them all to commit acts that bring both ruin and salvation.
Reminiscent of Bobbie Ann Mason, Annie Proulx, and Kent Haruf in its deeply American tone, The New Valley is a tender exploration of resilience, isolation, and the consuming ache for human connection. Weil’s empathetic, meticulous prose makes this is a debut of inescapable power.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Here & Now? Not really. |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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In one sense, it's an interesting book with tension built into the stories. At the same time, the claim that it introduces an audience to the people of the Southern Appalachian communities along the New River is a far miss. There was thanks given to a cattle farmer in the region for teaching the author about the ways of farm animals but the subsequent reporting would make the farmer wince. Further, the idea that a family would kill its cattle for no reason given in the book and bury them en mass defies understanding of the communities along the New. As an ethnographer and someone who grew up on the New before migration to the West Coast and beyond, there is too little of the reality of farm and rural life. Stuck on a coast-to-coast flight, I read the entire book and afterwards wondered how other reviewers gave such praise. Yes, there is stoicism in the region and people often suffer in silence but, at the same time, there is a sensibility that is sadly missing.
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| Jim Harrison is correct. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The landscape is a very real character in The New Valley and it is so skillfully rendered, you can smell the cow pasture and feel the cold bite of the wind. Weil's stark portraits of his rural characters are both realistic and respectful. Read this first work and you'll find yourself happily anticipating the next Weil project. Jim Harrison's quote appears on the front of the book jacket, and he is right, "...It is a very rare but clear case of the sky being the limit for a young author."
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| Excellent! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Weil's collection of novellas is a lot of things: a book brimming with beautiful prose, a work that understands the vast importance of setting (the Virginia land that shapes the characters living in them), and features characters that live and breathe and stay in your heart long after their stories have ended on the page. But for me, it is primarily a book about heartbreaking loneliness and isolation, and Weil captures that emotion more intensely than perhaps any book I've read.
My only quibble is with the middle novella, Stillman Wing. I am as invested in Stillman and as moved by his situation as I am with the two main characters of the other novellas. But the way that Weil has chosen to purposefully unmoor us in time prevented me from really settling into Stillman's world. But still, this debut work for Weil is a wonder. I highly recommend it!
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| masterful use of language |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Josh Weil's writing is visceral. The physical quality of his descriptions and the way he designs the stories are unusual and compelling. For example, at the end of the first story Osby resolves the problem that was presented in the story's first sentence. The author's drawings illustrate the second story's central metaphor. The language in the third story lets you watch a bit removed as the main character is treated as one who is removed from everyday society. These three stories describe the core being of three different bone lonely men told in a convincing way. They are worth reading several times.
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| The New Valley- great experience |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I enjoyed this book very much. I could not put it down once I started reading. The characters were as tangible as the land of Virginia that Weil so beautiful renders in his writing .
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