Train Dreams
A Novella
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3.8 • 273 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Now a major motion picture starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones–coming to Netflix on November 21!
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
One of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011
From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) comes Train Dreams, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnson's most evocative works of fiction.
Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.
It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Train Dreams packs a lot of ideas about a lost America into a slim novella bursting with quirky characters and unforgettable imagery. At the center is Robert Grainier, a manual laborer in the pre-WWII American Northwest. We follow him from state to state and job to job (railroad work, logging, and other manual labor) and share in his curious, alternately funny and moving encounters along the way. We watch him shift from solitary soul to family man and risk it all in his hardscrabble, itinerant work. Denis Johnson’s unpretentiously poetic prose provides rich period details and digs into both mythology and history as the story moves organically between the everyday and the otherworldly. There’s a quiet kind of magic to it all as we experience the push and pull between the industrial and natural worlds; it’s easy to see why it was adapted to film. Train Dreams is a lot of things, but most of all, it’s uniquely American.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers eager for a fat follow-up to Tree of Smoke could be forgiven a modicum of skepticism at this tidy volume a reissue of a 2003 O. Henry Prize winning novella that originally appeared in the Paris Review but it would be a shame to pass up a chance to encounter the synthesis of Johnson's epic sensibilities rendered in miniature in the clipped tone of Jesus' Son. The story is a snapshot of early 20th-century America as railroad laborer Robert Granier toils along the rails that will connect the states and transform his itinerant way of life. Drinking in tent towns and spending summers in the wilds of Idaho, Granier misses the fire back home that leaves no trace of his wife and child. The years bring diminishing opportunities, strange encounters, and stranger dreams, but it's not until after participating in the miracle of flight and a life-changing encounter with a mythical monster that Granier realizes what he's been looking for. An ode to the vanished West that captures the splendor of the Rockies as much as the small human mysteries that pass through them, this svelte stand-alone has the virtue of being a gem in itself, and, for the uninitiated, a perfect introduction to Johnson.
Customer Reviews
Good, not Great
I expected more after reading all the glowing reviews but found a good story, well written, and not verbose, but not extraordinary in any way. I will read more Johnson however as he has a way with words...EAF
A beautiful novella
This novella is about the life of a decent man, Robert Grainier, living in Idaho from about the 1880s to 1968. He works at all kinds of labor jobs, marries, and has a child. His wife and daughter die in a fire and Robert spends the rest of his life living simply, haunted by their deaths. Johnson’s writing is beautiful—clear and evocative, and consonant with Robert’s world. Johnson is not showing off, just telling a beautiful story.
Gorgeous!
Not a word out of place. Gorgeous!