Controlled Burn
Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Once or twice a decade, an unknown short-story writer blazes onto the literary scene with work that is thrilling and new. Scott Wolven is such a talent, and his raw, blistering tales of hard-bitten convicts, dodgy informers, and men running from the law make for "the most exciting, authentic collection of short stories I have read in years," says George Pelecanos.
Brooding, edgy, and sometimes violent, Controlled Burn's loosely linked stories are each in some way a distillation of hard time -- spent either in prison, the backwoods of Vermont, or the badlands of the American West. Peopled by boxers, drunks, truck drivers, murderers, bounty hunters, drifters traveling under assumed names, and men whose luck ran out a thousand miles ago, these stories feel hard-won from life, and if they are moody and stark, so too are they filled with human longing.
Controlled Burn is divided into two sections: "The Northeast Kingdom" and "The Fugitive West." In each, Scott Wolven reveals a broken world where there is no bottom left to hit. In the haunting "Outside Work Detail," convicts stoically dig graves for their fellow prisoners yet reserve their deepest grief for the senseless death of a deer. "Crank" introduces Red Green, a maniacally brilliant addict who brews his own crystal meth in a backwoods lab, and whose high-energy antics inspire both cautious admiration and mortal fear in his business associates. In "Ball Lightning Reported," Red Green's ultimate fate is revealed. In "Atomic Supernova," a revenge-obsessed sheriff deputizes a known cop-killer to help him hunt down a counterfeiter and drug lord. The unexpectedly tender and heartbreaking "The Copper Kings" concerns a father facing the dark truth behind his son's disappearance. And in "Vigilance," a hunted man struggles to escape his past, always yearning for an honorable yet perhaps unreachable future.
Powered by a spare, ruminative prose style that recalls the best of Denis Johnson and Thom Jones, Controlled Burn is an unforgettable debut.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
To say that these beautifully written, deceptively simple stories are loosely connected is to miss a large part of the point. The collection, divided into two geographical sections ("The Northeast Kingdom" and "The Fugitive West"), begins with a man trapped into becoming a drug informant; it ends with another man getting the same treatment from the authorities. All the stories, including three that have been published in recent Best American Mystery Stories anthologies, share certain themes: life in prison; a fascination with guns and violence, even among men who aren't career criminals; the despair of working-class life, especially in jobs on the fringes of economically depressed areas. A man on a prison farm buries the bodies of dead convicts while a deer caught on an electric fence burns in the background. A gang of Hispanic fighters descends from Canada to challenge workers at a logging camp in bloody battles. Wolven's prose is as cold and sharp as an ice crystal: "If I'm not here day after tomorrow," a sheriff tells the narrator of "Atomic Supernova," "you go ahead and kill Bob Burke and we'll figure it all out later." Wolven's not as romantic or sympathetic as Hemingway, but it's hard to think that Papa wouldn't appreciate his artistry and imagination.
