Since the turn of the century, a generation has come of age knowing only war, recession, political gridlock, racial hostility, and a simmering fear of environmental calamity. In the country's forgotten pockets, where foreclosures, Walmart's, and opiates riddle the land, death rates for rural whites have skyrocketed. This is the world the characters in Stephen Markley's brilliant debut novel, Ohio, inherit. This is New Canaan.
On one pivotal summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the rust belt town where they grew up, each of them with a mission. There's Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist, whose fruitless ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park and now back to "The Cane" with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her former lover's mother; Dan Eaton, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a date with a woman he's tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel's shocking climax.
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[THE COFFIN HAD NO BODY IN IT]***
(@simonschuster, 4 June 2019, paperback, 512 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I was blown away by this book. Seriously. It's amazing and deserves the praise being thrown at it. The final chunk of the novel totally floored me; I was horrified and heart-broken in equal measure, sobbing my little heart out. The book reminds me a lot of the style of Joyce Carol Oates. She's one of my favourite writers so this is a good thing. Trust me. I loved the way the book alternates between the stories of the four characters. The writing is this book is impressive, so rich, vivid and full of incredible detail. The book is a slow burner and not fast paced like books I tend to prefer. I loved how I was slowly and excruciatingly sucked into the world of New Canaan and the four characters. This is a book to savour and cherish.
