The Good Hand
A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown
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- 5,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021
‘Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny … like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy’
DAVID LIPSKY
‘After reading The Good Hand you may reassess whether you have ever truly done a hard day’s work in your life … This lyrical and engrossing memoir is an extraordinary tale … Undeniably powerful’
SUNDAY TIMES
The must-read memoir of 2021.
Michael Patrick Smith grew up in a ramshackle farmhouse where his father beat the walls and threw dinner plates. As a restless young man left unmoored by the crashing economy, Smith cut a path to North Dakota to rent a mattress on a flophouse floor. Sleeping boot to beard with the other rough-edged men looking to earn a cent drilling for oil, Smith wanted the work to burn him clean – of his violent upbringing, his demons, his disjointed, doomed relationships. He did not expect, among these quick-fisted, foul-mouthed hands, to find a community.
The Good Hand is a memoir of danger and exhaustion, of suffering, loneliness and grit, of masculinity and of learning how to reconcile yourself to yourself.
Reviews
‘After reading The Good Hand you may reassess whether you have ever truly done a hard day’s work in your life … This lyrical and engrossing memoir is an extraordinary tale … Smith writes movingly of his chaotic childhood … the tragedies slowly drip out … There have been predictable comparisons to other recent hardship autobiographies — JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Tara Westover’s Educated — but Smith’s story, blessedly, comes with more (crude) humour … Undeniably powerful’
Sunday Times
‘Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny … like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy, The Good Hand is one of those brilliant close-ups that suddenly flips to become a wide shot of the American moment. An engrossing combination of participation, reportage, self-discovery, and witness’
David Lipsky, author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
‘Smith guides us through a long muddy year in North Dakota’s oil boom … It’s a surprisingly tender account of a man who is searching for salvation – from the sins of his family, from the drunken and drugged-up sins of a world broken by corporations – while trying desperately to find himself through work’
Robert Sullivan, author of The Thoreau You Don’t Know
‘A sincere and colourful account of down-and-out men trying to make it and maybe grow up in the eternal dreary tailgate party and crushing dangerous toil of the fracking boom. As one of Smith’s mentors tells him, “now you know why gas is so expensive.”’
William T. Vollmann, author of The Lucky Star
‘A thrill-read – There Will Be Blood made modern, and with added wit – The Good Hand is that rare literary treasure: all things, all at once. By mixing memoir with reportage and analysis, and telling his tale with rigor and joy, Smith gives us a hoot that also feels necessary’
Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith impresses in this fascinating debut memoir about his 2013 move from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Williston, N.Dak., to become an oil field hand. Modeling his life on Teddy Roosevelt, who transformed himself from a "squeaky-voiced four-eyed dork" to an "Indiana Jones president," Smith set out to mature from a self-indulgent kid into a man "tough as a hickory knot" by "be beaten and pummeled, knocked down" by hard labor. He began as a truck driver's assistant and describes, in the profanity-laced language of his new colleagues, how he developed a kinship with them. Many were abused by their fathers and Smith, likewise, recounts his own memories of abuse ("Dad had threatened to kill us, yes, but it wasn't the first time"). He also describes how he forced himself to compartmentalize his coworkers' "casual, constant, continuing faucet drip of racism." Over the course of a year he earned their respect while discovering that "a good hand... is a person who does honest work to the best of their ability every day and who offers that work as a living prayer." Smith's prose shines when sharing how his experience on the oil rig shaped his idea of what it means to live a meaningful life. This page-turner delivers.
