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A Novel
by Jess Walter
Book Reviewed by:From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins—and in the propulsive spirit of Charles Portis' True Grit—comes a hilarious, empathetic, and brilliantly provocative adventure through life in modern America, about a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren.
Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.
Now Kinnick's old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?
With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he'd left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called "a genius of the modern American moment" (Philadelphia Inquirer).
For the most part, Walter convincingly steers between a crime caper and a dysfunctional family drama, and there's a wry sense of humor throughout that lightens the novel. And as characters go, Rhys is a lovable curmudgeon... In this convincing depiction of divided America and ailing families, Jess Walter holds out hope that the damage of the past can be dealt with and broken relationships might be restored...continued
Full Review
(709 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Jess Walter, the author of So Far Gone, is based in Washington, a state that has produced a number of well-known writers. Below we feature a small selection of Washington State authors and books.
Many of Sherman Alexie's early works are set on the Spokane Reservation, where he grew up. His linked short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1992), is peopled by lovable rogues and drunks, among them Thomas Builds-the-Fire and James Many Horses. Basketball is popular on the reservation and serves as a link to Alexie's autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), in which 14-year-old Arnold Spirit, Jr. transfers from the rez school to an elite majority-white high ...
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Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of Matrix
Jess Walter is beloved for being a prose wizard with a sparkling, infectious sense of humor and a huge heart. He makes readers love his characters even when they don't find themselves particularly loveable. So Far Gone speaks directly into the profoundly troubled soul of our fractured, embittered country; miraculously, it does so with gentle wryness and angry love. What a rollicking good time.
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