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Published Jun 2009
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
"Starred Review. Taken individually, each novella offers its own tragic pleasures, but together, the works create a deeply human landscape that delivers great beauty." - Publishers Weekly
"Intense and satisfying; highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Weil's empathy for his damaged people has not yet found a compatible narrative." - Kirkus Reviews
"Throughout, Weil limns a rugged emotional landscape every bit as raw and desolate as the land that inspired it..." - Booklist
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jilan Carroll Glorfield
Josh Weil is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea and the novella collection The New Valley and The Age of Perpetual Light.
A New York Times Editors Choice, The New Valley won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New Writers Award from the GLCA, and a "5 Under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. Weil's other fiction has appeared in Granta, Esquire, Agni and One Story, and he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, The Sun, Oxford American, and Poets & Writers. A recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, he has been the Tickner Writer-in-Residence at Gilman School, the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green ...
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