★ 12/11/2017
In this powerful novel, Vlautin (The Free) writes about characters whose big dreams and plans are often stunted by fate and circumstance, but who’ve managed to find a way to push through, bruised but with hard-won wisdom. Young Horace Hopper is half-Irish, half-Paiute Indian, and he has spent most of his life as a ranch hand. While herding sheep in the stark, isolated mountains near Tonopah, Nev., Hopper listens to heavy metal music and struggles with the shame of being abandoned by his parents. Hopper’s guardian, the aging rancher Eldon Reese, suffers crippling back pain and faces an uncertain future as his way of life becomes less and less tenable. Reese and his wife love Hopper dearly and consider him a son, but the young man soon leaves for Tucson to pursue his dream of becoming a professional boxer. Hopper, now calling himself “Hector Hidalgo,” finds a washed-up trainer and manages to get some fights throughout the Southwest and Mexico. A series of injuries, however, soon threaten to derail his career before it’s really off the ground. In this excellent novel, Vlautin’s reverence for the land recalls writers such as Jim Harrison and John Steinbeck. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (Feb.)
Don't Skip Out on Me: A Novel
Narrated by Willy Vlautin
Willy VlautinUnabridged — 8 hours, 5 minutes
Don't Skip Out on Me: A Novel
Narrated by Willy Vlautin
Willy VlautinUnabridged — 8 hours, 5 minutes
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Overview
A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
Horace Hopper is a half-Paiute, half-Irish ranch hand who wants to be somebody. He's spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can't shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he's known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer.
Mr. Reese is holding on to a way of life that is no longer sustainable. He's a seventy-two-year-old rancher with a bad back. He's not sure how he'll keep things going without Horace but he knows the boy must find his own way.
Coming down from the mountains of Nevada to the unforgiving desert heat of Tucson, Horace finds a trainer and begins to get fights. His journey to become a champion brings him to boxing rings of Mexico and finally, to the seedy streets of Las Vegas, where Horace learns he can't change who he is or outrun his destiny.
Willy Vlautin writes from America's soul, chronicling the lives of those who are downtrodden and forgotten with profound tenderness. Don't Skip Out on Me is a beautiful, wrenching story about one man's search for identity and belonging that will make you consider those around you differently.
Editorial Reviews
(The book is) written in the sort of scorched, bare-bones prose, stripped of metaphors and similes, that has won him fans such as Roddy Doyle, Donna Tartt and Colm Tóibín.
Willy Vlautin has been literature’s best-kept secret for far too long. He may well be our own Steinbeck, but with a haunting steel-guitar sensibility all his own.
Vlautin’s latest novel…inches ever closer to a literary equivalent of his unrivalled ability to make us believe in the characters in his songs long after they’ve stopped believing in themselves.
Vlautin’s sparse, plan sentences are well-matched to the brusque world he depicts. At the same time, his compassion for his characters never wavers.
Vlautin steers his characters down their hard path like a veteran scrive of the American road.
Vlautin is on to something about what’s wrong with America, and with many Americans, especially in the age of Trump...
‘Willy Vlautin is the poet laureate of the downtrodden and disenfranchised underclass of American society, detailing with real empathy and insight the daily struggle of his characters in modern society.
(Willy Vlautin) is the literary version of a Neil Young or a Tom Petty, bearing a ragged standard for empathy, compassion and decency, defending notions of the story as a sorting office for the soul. “
A debut road-trip novel that echoes the spare, bleak style of such writers as Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver…[Vlautin] conveys the pain and desolate lives of his characters without a hint of melodrama
Willy Vlautin is one of the bravest novelists writing... An unsentimental Steinbeck, a heartbroken Haruf, Willy Vlautin tells us who really lives now in our America, our city in ruins.
I love Willy Vlautin’s novels. Downbeat and plaintive as they are, the tenderness holds on like the everlasting arms…. Willy’s voice is pure and his stories universal. He never loses hope or heart and I believe every word he’s written.
Vlautin’s prose is deceptively simple, his clipped descriptions loaded with meaning. The narrative is as unsparing as Hopper’s fights, but what stays standing is a profound sense of hope, a hope that drives society’s downtrodden and provides the theme for much of Vlautin’s work.
With straightforward economy, he draws us into [the characters’] seemingly intractable problems, revealing their persistence and decency... Vlautin’s unadorned narrative is affecting; these unassuming characters bore into us in surprising ways.
Few contemporary western writers tell the truth with the unerring eye of Willy Vlautin, a literary realist whose emotionally charged characters achieve that rarest of goals in fiction—to tell a great story...
The straightforward beauty of Vlautin’s writing, and the tender care he shows his characters, turns a story of struggle into indispensable reading. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
The world needs more Willy Vlautin, and Dont’ Skip Out on Me is his best novel yet.”
Beautifully crushing and complete.
Magnificent…. Willy Vlautin is now one of America’s great writers.”
No one anywhere writes as beautifully about people whose stories stay close to the dirt. Willy Vlautin is a secular—and thus real and profoundly useful—saint.
I absolutely loved Don’t Skip Out On Me, just as I have loved all of Vlautin’s previous novels. Vlautin’s gritty, scrappy world bursts with a tenderness that will hook you in from the first line to the last. This is a writer who should never be ignored.
Vlautin unerringly captures the heartbreak of the generational divide — as every older generation realizes it cannot protect its younger charges from making their own mistakes as they forge their own way.
Vlautin is a writer with incredible heart, and The Free is his best achievement yet, a profound look at characters living on the margins, honest people who have been hit hard by the dark realities of a difficult world.
An emotionally wrenching story of a ranch hand who dreams of being a championship boxer and an elderly couple trying to hold on in central Nevada.
Vlautin. . . . strips away our defenses with close-to-the bone prose that leaves us utterly exposed to the tragedy of being alive—and every bit as thankful for those moments of aching humanity before the curtain falls.
Willy’s novel Lean on Pete was one of my favorite reads of the last decade. I might love The Free even more. ‘Cinematic minimalism’ in the grand tradition of Fat City, Ironweed, and the works of the great Raymond Carver.
Vlautin’s eye for detail is sharp: every character is distinctly drawn and memorable.... for sheer cinéma-vérité detailing of American life right now, Lean on Pete is a good place to start.
Lean on Pete riveted me. Reading it, I was heartbroken and moved; enthralled and convinced. This is serious American literature.
Northline shines with naked honesty and unsentimental humanity. The character of Allison Johnson, and the wounded-but-still-walking people she encounters on her journey, will stay with me for a long while. Vlautin has written the American novel that I’ve been hoping to find.
“Don’t Skip Out On Me” is a heartbreaker of a book that appeals to our better nature. It leaves readers wanting to hang on to their loved ones and extend a hand to the strangers and overlooked people we pass every day.
Vlautin. . . . strips away our defenses with close-to-the bone prose that leaves us utterly exposed to the tragedy of being alive—and every bit as thankful for those moments of aching humanity before the curtain falls.
No one anywhere writes as beautifully about people whose stories stay close to the dirt. Willy Vlautin is a secular—and thus real and profoundly useful—saint.
With heartbreaking yet hopeful prose Vlautin weaves together a brutally honest tale of pain and isolation in America; of trouble and strife, both economic and spiritual... Vlautin’s novels cast a spotlight on the underclass and underbelly of this land and gives voice to those who may no longer have one.
Reading Willy Vlautin is like jumping into a clear, cold lake in the middle of summer. His prose is beautifully spare and clean, but underneath the surface lies an incredible depth, with all kinds of hidden stories and emotions resting in the shadows
Willy Vlautin is the most exciting young writer I’ve read in a long time, matching desolate emotional landscapes with stark physical ones. That he makes me care so deeply about people scraping to get back to the bottom is a testament to his power. I can’t recommend him highly enough.
With straightforward economy, he draws us into [the characters’] seemingly intractable problems, revealing their persistence and decency... Vlautin’s unadorned narrative is affecting; these unassuming characters bore into us in surprising ways.
2018-01-28
A spare, melancholic tale about a poor young man's burning desire to succeed as a boxer.Like his earlier novels, Vlautin's (The Free, 2014, etc.) latest follows in the tradition of John Steinbeck's and Raymond Carver's moving portraits of working-class people. The focus is on two nuanced characters. Horace Hopper is a 21-year-old half-Paiute, half-white man who works on 72-year-old Eldon Reese's sheep ranch in a canyon outside Tonopah, Nevada. Horace, abandoned by his mother when he was 12, was taken in by Reese and his wife, Louise. Horace has grown up in a loving, generous family who gave him work, food, money, and a life, but he yearns for more, to "be somebody," to fight like a Mexican boxer because "they're true warriors who never quit." He's committed to going to Tucson, Arizona, to participate in a Golden Gloves competition. Reese tries his best to dissuade Horace, offering to give him his ranch when he can no longer run it, which is probably pretty soon. Horace says he has to go—"I'm gonna do great down there"—but promises to come back. With a heart full of hope and determination he moves to Tucson, finds a part-time job, and hires Alberto Ruiz as his trainer. Vlautin's narrative seamlessly floats back and forth between Reese and Horace as he creates two beautifully rendered characters. Reese's quiet life goes on: working on his tractor, talking to friends, missing Horace, drinking a cold beer. Horace works out and trains with Ruiz, but Ruiz notices a flaw in Horace's boxing technique. He tends to "freeze up," something another fighter would quickly pick up on. They're going to work on it. Horace finds success in his first tastes of competition, but there's a distinct sense of foreboding in the air as Vlautin slowly lets this poignant tale unwind to its inevitable, heartbreaking conclusion.A powerful, haunting portrayal of lives rendered in unflinching, understated prose.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170370054 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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