Publishers Weekly
09/24/2018
Lovers of absurdist humor with an epic flavor will find a delight in Allred’s second novel (after A Simplified Map of the Real World: The Renata Stories). The fisherman is a simple man: he loves the sea and he loves his Cariña, from whom he’s been separated by time and shipwreck. Upon receipt of her final letter to him before her death, he embarks on a mythic hero’s journey to the Isle of the Dead, where he encounters shapeshifting birds, demi-deities, a legendary beast, and a snarky, narcissistic crow who fashions himself the king of the dead. What began as a quest to reunite with his lost love quickly becomes a battle for the survival of a spirit world, in whatever form that might take, and an examination of the divine. Sparked with risqué humor, the nearly Sisyphian questing of the fisherman devolves into a series of increasingly absurd and astonishing scenarios, all underscored with a strong thematic element of hope. Scholars of myth and lore, and readers prepared to be swept away on someone else’s trip (perhaps of the hallucinogenic variety), will be enthralled. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Sparked with risqué humor, the nearly Sisyphian questing of the fisherman devolves into a series of increasingly absurd and astonishing scenarios, all underscored with a strong thematic element of hope. Scholars of myth and lore, and readers prepared to be swept away on someone else’s trip (perhaps of the hallucinogenic variety), will be enthralled."
—Publishers Weekly
"Richly conceived, enjoyable, and a treat for readers of myths and legends." —Kirkus Reviews
"The Alehouse at the End of the World weaves together mythic circumstances and language to form a tale of heroism, self-sacrifice, and love that speaks to turbulent times." — Meagan Logsdon, Foreword Reviews
“The Alehouse at the End of the World will take you on a fast-moving ride through sixteenth century farce with a present tense echo effect. Bard-like in its constellation of bird-gods and rough hewn characters tossed around like breadcrumbs, the epic voyage catches you between laughter and a tear forming at the edge of your eye. Like life does.”
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan
“The talented and erudite Stevan Allred is a natural storyteller, weaving together in The Alehouse at the End of the World various threads of Eastern and Western myth, fable, and legend, into an inviting, raucous romp through the lands of the Dead, where a lonely fisherman, accompanied by an entertaining cast of Avian co-conspirators, wanders in search of his long-lost beloved. You will frequently gasp, occasionally wring your hands, and always delight at Mr. Allred’s sharp ear for dialogue, unerring instinct for suspense, and magisterial command of the fanciful world that may await us all in our next life.”
—Michael Shou-Yung Shum, author of Queen of Spades
“Stevan Allred, armed with an abiding love of narrative, and an arsenal of sentence-by-sentence wit and tumble, draws us into an epic battle for the soul of the afterworld, and we are led ever on by language dangerously funny. The creatures that illuminate this journey with their eternal ponderings and arguments, are not necessarily human except in their search for reason and love, driven as they are by power, sex, and the beautiful mystery of death.”
—Joanna Rose, author of Little Miss Strange
“Alehouse echoes ancient myths of creation and undoings in the practice of love with a blend of Shakespearean comedy and Melvillian language on a classic odyssey to the end of the world and beyond. Trust me, people. This is the wildly inventive and lovingly hilarious work of a master craftsman.”
—Robin Cody, author of Ricochet River
“The Alehouse at the End of the World will swallow you whole. You’ll land on the Isle of the Dead and walk with the fisherman who longs for his beloved. The crow will repel you with his solipsistic drama, and the goddess will seduce you as part of her plan. Stevan Allred’s luscious language drives the novel, and his playful remix of lyrics and religious systems satisfies deep questions about the afterlife and the soul, which he describes as ‘a vibration so quiet it can scarcely be heard… the thing that gives self-awareness.’ Reading this novel delights like a fine ale.”
—Kate Gray, author of Carry the Sky
“Crows and fishermen, gods and goddesses, love and deceit, boats full of the dead, clams that are much more than clams, an island inside the belly of the beast, and batches and batches of ale. The Alehouse at the End of the World is a comic epic that made me feel like us messy mortals can actually make a difference.”
—Yuvi Zalkow, author of A Brilliant Novel in the Works
“Allred’s imagination staggers the imagination.”
—Jan Baross, author of José Builds a Woman
“The Alehouse at the End of the World mines our primal desire to go through the looking glass or the back of the wardrobe. Stevan Allred is an ingenius guide. His Isle of the Dead is a dark place that crackles with life, full of shapeshifting, bed-switching heros fighting for the fate of the living world. An epic tale from a master storyteller.”
—Scott Sparling, author of Wire to Wire
“Stevan Allred has spun an original myth with its own vocabulary and weather system. The imagery alone has impressed new memories upon my psyche. Peculiar and inventive yet true to the human condition, The Alehouse at the End of the World holds familiar tyrants and temptations, confronted in the most unexpected ways by an unforgettable cast. The experience I found in these pages is the reason I read—to reach inconceivable places, to be touched, to be changed. By canoe, winged goddess, or whale, I would follow Allred anywhere.”
—Renee Macalino Rutledge, author of The Hour of Daydreams
“There’s all manner of craziness in The Alehouse at the End of the World: a giant beast who’s swallowed the spirit world, a hairless blue fisherman, a trio of shape-shifting god-birds, a self-aggrandizing (Trumpian?) crow, The Isle of the Dead, a feathered goddess, and a dead woman who’s.... well, you’ll see. Yet underneath these fantastical guises, lies the same hearts that can be found in all of us; some are kind, some are driven, some are evil, some are insatiable, and in spite of their non-human forms, they are all so very human. In this magical world, the net of a dark fate tightens around the existence of this motley crew, and an apocalypse brews on the horizon.”
—Dianah Hughley, bookseller, Powell’s City of Books
Kirkus Reviews
2018-08-21
An imaginative journey into a spirit world, evoking ancient myths about death and the afterlife.
A fisherman travels from the material world to the Isle of the Dead to find his beloved. The island is populated with shape-shifting characters, many of them gods or goddesses. Countless clams hold the souls of the dead, which are "tasty little morsels" for the crow who is the undisputed King of the Dead. The fisherman strikes a deal with the crow to find the clam containing his beloved and not eat it, but the crow thinks of him as that "flaming dingleberry," and the fisherman soon wants to kill the "foul tyrant" crow. The characters are marvelously entertaining—a frigatebird, a pelican, and a cormorant are low-level gods with distinct personalities. They befriend the fisherman and fear the crow, who refers to himself with the royal "We." (He can take the form of a man, a mole, a dragonfly, or any other shape he wants.) And there is Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice and fertility, who cannot do harm and finds the crow pretty sexy in his human form. For the crow's part, she makes his "zibik" hard enough to carve an "entire forest into toothpicks." A couple of sex scenes are explicit despite metaphors of arrows and quivers and touching that brings "earth and heaven together." But both know that lust doesn't equate with love, and soon he wants her dead. Incidentally, the entire spirit world lies inside the belly of the giant beast Kiamah, "the devourer of all things." Yet island residents still enjoy their ale, and at one point the fisherman declares "It's good to be alive!" This island of the dead is more active than a lot of retirement communities.
Richly conceived, enjoyable, and a treat for readers of myths and legends.
