Excerpt from Lanny by Max Porter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Blood iron, coins, nails and pins.

War men with bullets and rusty hinge grins.

The smell of metal lingers on my lips and on my fingers.

My father would have me count his coppers on a Sunday. Memory swings like a hard dirt rudder then slips up with a boom and a crack and catches the wind.

God, Lanny, I say. I hate the smell of metal too. I despise the smell of metal on my hands.

Why do they call you Mad Pete?

Hah! I dunno mate. I don't think my covering all the trees up by the cricket pitch with plaster-of-Paris after the Great Storm did me any favours. Anyway, I don't mind it. Mad Pete. Better than Bad Pete.

Or Sad Pete.

Well yes. Isn't fair though, given how fuckin' – excuse my language – given how insane some of the folk in this village are.

Like Jean Coombe.

Exactly! She wears a Santa costume every day of the year and carries a golf club in her wicker basket and I don't hear anyone calling her Mad Jean.

LANNY'S DAD

I'm awake, thinking of quarterly dividends and Olympic women cyclists. I hear the crunch of gravel, too heavy for a fox, too light for a man. I hop out of bed, pad across the room and peek out of the curtain.

What the hell?

I tiptoe hurriedly across the bedroom, out onto the landing, down the stairs, avoiding the creaky step. I'm not sure why I'm being secretive. I go through the kitchen and out of the open back door.

He's at the bottom of the driveway turning onto the lawn.

I follow at a safe distance. He walks to the old oak.

He kneels and presses his ear to it. This whole thing is lit by the security light, and beautiful, like a film set.

Lanny lies down, talking to the base of the tree.

I wander over, heavy footfall and a cough so as not to surprise.

Lanny? Lanny you're sleepwalking.

He turns to me, green eyes flashing, wide awake.

Oh wow, do I sleepwalk?

What? Well, I don't know. What the hell are you doing out here?

I'm awake, Dad!

Yes, I realise that now, Lan. I'm wondering what you're doing out here. I assumed you were sleepwalking. It's the middle of the night.

I heard the girl in the tree. What?

There's a girl living under this tree. She's lived here for hundreds of years. Her parents were cruel to her so she hid under this tree and she's never come out.

OK, nutbar. Come on.

He offers no resistance as I scoop him up. He's freezing cold.

As we crunch back up the drive I tell him, Lanny, you shouldn't wander about in the dark.

Have you ever heard her?

No. I think you've imagined it. There's nobody living in the tree.

I carry him up and lie him down, cover him with his duvet, add another blanket, give him his stuffed polar bear.

Dad?

Go to sleep now.

Dad?

What, Lanny?

Which do you think is more patient, an idea or a hope?

I'm suddenly really annoyed. He's too old for shit like this. Or too young. It's fucking silly.

Go to sleep Lanny, and don't get out of bed. We'll talk about this in the morning.

I lie awake worrying, picturing my son lying on the cold grass whispering to a tree. Which do you think is more patient, an idea or a hope? What's wrong with him?

PETE

It's Lanny's idea, a game he plays with his folks in the car. We are to tell a story, one line at a time.

We are drawing a bowl of plums and I'm trying to get him to slow down. I'm asking him not to panic if what he gets on the page doesn't seem to relate to what he sees. Start again. Ease up. Loosen your wrist. I tell him the best representation of a plum ever created might not bear any resemblance to any plum the artist ever saw. Just look at them and think about their plum-ness, the essence of the plum as a physical plum in your space, light bouncing off the plum and into your eyes, and try a few things out and see what feels plummy, gently nudge a plum into being, don't demand it.

Excerpt from Lanny. Copyright (c) 2019 by Max Porter. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.