On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl
Set in 1950s America at a time when people stopped looking west and started looking up: a breathtakingly beautiful debut novel of revolution, chance and the gambles we take with the human heart.‘Imagine a cross between Revolutionary Road and Battleborn (with a little bit of Brokeback Mountain thrown in) and you might end up with something akin to Pufahl's debut, a rich and rugged suburban western about dreams deferred and living defiantly’ Oprah Magazine
‘On Swift Horses is a marvel, a beautifully written novel that traces its raw, guarded characters from California to Las Vegas to Mexico with grace and inevitabilityShannon Pufahl’s mid century West is dead-on right, as recognisable as a box of old photos and yet completely original in voice and scope’ Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
‘Once in a rare while you come across a novel of such transfixing beauty that it enlarges your faith in the medium itself. On Swift Horses is, for me, one of those books. As an exploration of life lived in the outer distances of plain sight, it is suffused with hazard and touched by grace, furnished with the longevity of a postwar classic and the immediacy of the present tense. It is, simply put, a masterpiece’ Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
‘Pufahl limns the borders of the prodigal and the moral, and there – among the seedy hotels, the off-duty sailors, the noise and dust of the horse races, in Tijuana and in Vegas – she finds new forms of fidelity and care. Read this book for the adventure, for the keening lyricism of the lost and searching, but mostly read this book because no one writes like Shannon Pufahl. Her voice is muscular, awesome and pure. This book knocked me flat on my back’ Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
‘Pufahl paints her characters with remarkable compassion and decency …Her lyrical prose depicts an American West that is both desolate and beautiful and inspires a sense of individuality that can apply to much more of the human experience than we’ve previously been led to believe’ San Francisco Chronicle
Shannon Pufahl grew up in rural Kansas. She teaches at Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction. Her essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review and elsewhere, on topics ranging from John Brown and the Antebellum midwest, to literary theory and memoir. She lives in Monterey, California with her wife.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780008293970 |
| ISBN 10 | 000829397X |
| Title | On Swift Horses |
| Author | Shannon Pufahl |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2019-11-05 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |