War Against the Animals
A Novel
-
- 10,99 €
-
- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
From the author of the acclaimed Boys of Life and the award-wining The Coming Storm comes a novel about a small town in upstate New York riven by tensions between the old residents and the newcomers.
Cameron Barnes, formerly of New York City, lives in a small town in upstate New York. He's regained a measure of his health after nearly dying, but his long-term lover has moved away and he now faces the daunting prospect of relearning how to live with the prospect of a future alone. As a tentative step, Cameron hires two local young men, brothers Kyle and Jesse Vanderhof, to do some renovation work on his property.
With the area's depressed economy, the town's changing population, and recent deaths in the family, the Vanderhofs are facing hard times and tough decisions. The older brother, Kyle, sees an opportunity in Cameron, pushing Jesse to befriend him and take advantage of his boredom and directionlessness. Caught between the opposing worlds embodied by Cameron and Kyle, Jesse is torn by his brother's demands, community and family expectations, and his own mix of volatile, contradictory emotions. Mirroring the town's own increasingly tense split between long-term residents and new arrivals, this trio moves inexorably towards crisis and potential tragedy that will transform each of their lives.
Widely praised for his deft prose and brilliant characterizations, Paul Russell has become regarded as one of the finest contemporary American novelists. Now, with War Against the Animals, he returns with his richest, most accomplished, and most compelling novel yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Russell (The Coming Storm, etc.) eloquently explores the divide between gay and straight culture in his latest novel, a thoughtful, provocative study of an attraction that develops between an upscale, retired garden designer who is HIV-positive and a young redneck in a fast-changing upstate New York community. Cameron Barnes is the Manhattan transplant who thinks his love life is over after surviving the barrage of illnesses that come with full-blown AIDS, but Barnes's quiet, idyllic life in Stone Hollow is disrupted when he hires a pair of young brothers, Kyle and Jesse Vanderhof, to fix his dilapidated barn. Initially, Barnes has little contact with the brothers, but a strange attraction slowly develops between the former landscaper and Jesse, who is more sensitive and open-minded than his crude older brother. The backdrop for the romance is a struggle to control the town and its values, filtered through the prism of a mayoral election in which the leader of the powerful Vanderhof clan, Roy, battles a close friend of Cameron's named Max Greenblatt, who represents the interests of the rapidly growing liberal gay community. Russell is a patient, masterful narrator, dexterously alternating scenes featuring Cameron and his gay friends, Jesse grappling with his sexuality and Jesse's controlling brother's scheme to extract money from Cameron. In the hands of a lesser writer, this might have been a clumsy, obvious book, but Russell's compassionate, insightful prose illuminates the differences that help define us under the umbrella of community as well as the sparks that fly when boundaries are violated.
