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Published Jun 2013
312 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife's beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.
This novel, from one of our most exciting young writers, is a powerful exploration of the limits of parenthood and marriage - and of what happens when a marriage's success is measured solely by the children it produces, or else the sorrow that marks their absence.
"This challenging, boldly experimental attempt at myth-building may resonate with equally ambitious readers, but offers fewer rewards to those looking for narrative pleasures." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A tragedy of fantastic proportions, the book's musical, often idiosyncratic prose will carry its readers into an unfamiliar but unforgettable world." - Library Journal
"Some of Bell's heavily symbolic adventuring grows too repetitive to sustain a full-length novel - there's a reason Jorge Borges stuck with short stories - but there's an undeniably heartfelt tone to this tale that transcends its unusual cast. As the male character's path to redemption leaves his body increasingly ravaged, Bell's book becomes an unflinching portrait of the struggle to keep a family intact." - Kirkus
"There is a power here that is almost overwhelming. The force of the writing is derived from something elemental and primal. Unlike anything I have read in a long time." - Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
"Matt Bell does not write sentences - he writes spells. He is not a novelist - he is a mystic. This book, which will grip you in an otherworldly trance, reads like something divined from tea leaves or translated from a charcoal cipher on a cave wall." - Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon and The Wilding
"In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods is a big, slinking, dangerous fairy tale, the kind with gleaming fangs and blood around the muzzle and a powerful heart you can hear thumping from miles away. The story's ferocity is matched by Matt Bell's glorious sentences: sinuous and darkly magical, they are taproots of the strange." - Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia
This information about In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Matt Bell's first story collection was How They Were Found. In 2012, Cataclysm Baby, a novella, was published by Mud Luscious Press. Bell's fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Best American Fantasy 2, and 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers, and shortlisted in Best American Short Stories 2010 and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He serves as Senior Editor at Dzanc Books and teaches writing at Northern Michigan University. This is his first novel.
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