Wind Drinkers
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A thrilling mix of French noir and American Western that charts a family’s struggle for freedom and justice in a hostile mountain community.
In the godforsaken valley of the Black Rimstone, four siblings meet by the viaduct, a place of their own away from home and daily life, which hold so little for them: Mark, who reads in secret against his father’s orders; Matthew, who understands the forest, the river, and all their creatures; Mabel, who wields her stunning beauty in pursuit of pleasure and independence; and Luke, so often pitied and dismissed as simpleminded, but whose fantastic dreams reveal an uncommon wisdom. Together they live as one, bound by an unshakable bond.
Hanging over them, and the rest of the valley, is the bleak prospect of work in the power plant, constructed and controlled by the fearsome Joyce. Having arrived a stranger, he owned the entire town within ten years, and now keeps a stranglehold on it through money and violence. But after generations are used and spit out in service of one man’s greed, there comes a breaking point.
Winner of the Prix Jean Giono, this masterful, parable-like novel bears witness to the power of nature and the promise of rebellion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
By turns sensual, grim, and melancholy, this lyrical and meandering novel from Bouysse (Born of No Woman) follows the fortunes of four adult siblings—Mathew, Mark, Luke, and Mabel Volny—in the Black Rimstone valley. The town that's grown up in the valley is owned by a man known only as Joyce, who rules the place via guards, spies, and a paid-for lawman, which gives the entire work a vaguely western feel. The book opens with a body found floating in the local river, but then cuts away to a florid account of the lives of the various members of the Volny clan. Only halfway through does Matthew kill two of Joyce's bullies to keep them from using grenades to kill fish in the river, but the crime element remains secondary to family dynamics and philosophical musings (observing his daughter, one character comes to understand "that without poetry, the world is nothing but constraints; that with it, it grows to become a limitless universe"). Conversations can be hard to follow, as it's seldom clear who's speaking—the lack of quotation marks doesn't help. Those expecting a conventional mystery will have to seek elsewhere.
