Postcards
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
Annie Proulx’s first novel, which received huge acclaim and launched an outstanding literary career.
‘Postcards’ is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home – not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences…
Reviews
‘Proulx has come close to writing “the great American novel”.’ New York Times
‘The richness of America is portrayed with memorable effect in this remarkable first novel – Faulkner springs to mind. “Postcards” is written from the heart and – for its raspy dialogue, laconic humour and beautiful description of the natural world – deserves to be widely read.’ Independent on Sunday
‘A sweeping and dramatic tale. Not since Steinbeck has the migrant worker's life been so evocatively rendered.’ Daily Telegraph
‘A remarkable novel; poetic and yet driven by a strong narrative, tragic and yet scored with deep veins of humour. Loyal Blood is one of those rare, haunted characters who continue to live in the mind after you finish the book.’ Literary Review
About the author
Annie Proulx published her first novel ‘Postcards’ in 1991 at the age of 56. ‘The Shipping News’ won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Award and the Irish Times International Prize. Her third novel, ‘Accordion Crimes’, was published in 1996. She is also the author of three short-story collections, ‘Heart Songs’ (1994), ‘Close Range’ (1999) and ‘Bad Dirt’ (2004). ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was made into an Oscar-winning film in 2005. ‘Fine Just the Way It Is’, her third collection of Wyoming short stories, was published in 2008.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this poignant first novel by Proulx ( Heart Songs and Other Stories ), artfully misspelled postcards form the tenuous links between ill-fated young trapper Loyal Blood and his family--Mink and Jewelle, Dub and Mernelle--who eke a meager existence from their ancestral Vermont farm. When Loyal accidentally kills his saucy redheaded sweetheart Billy while making love in the fields, he hides her body in a stone-covered fox den. Abruptly he tells his family that he and Billy are heading west to ``make a new start.'' In a vengeful rage his father Mink shoots Loyal's cows. Loyal endures harsh years of self-imposed exile as, from 1944 to the '80s, he roves from job to job--mining, fossil picking, trapping--each authoritatively detailed. Racked with gagging seizures whenever he tries to touch another woman, sick in his lungs, Loyal doggedly accepts his lot without complaint. Back home the violent, feckless Bloods fall into ruin, attempting arson, serving jail terms and losing the farm, which is sold for trailer parks. Flurries of postcards fly, both personal and commercial: brother Dub answers one for an artificial limb, desperate sister Mernelle responds to a lonely lumberman's ad for a wife. Proulx writes a rich, sensuous prose; she captures the earthy, hard-bitten voices of men and women resigned to travail and documents the passing of an epoch. If there is a fault, it is the overabundance of minor characters randomly introduced into the narrative.
