PDF Download Godforsaken Idaho, by Shawn Vestal
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Godforsaken Idaho, by Shawn Vestal
PDF Download Godforsaken Idaho, by Shawn Vestal
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Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Shawn Vestal and Jess Walter Shawn Vestal has worked for many years as a journalist and editor at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane. His stories have appeared in McSweeney's and Tin House, among many other publications, and his new collection is Godforsaken Idaho. Jess Walter is the author of six novels, one book of short fiction, and a new story collection, We Live in Water. His most recent novel, Beautiful Ruins, was named the best book of 2012 by Esquire and NPR’s Fresh Air. JW: Let’s start with the title, Godforsaken Idaho. You grew up in Southern Idaho. How much does the setting play a part in these stories, and in you as a writer? SV: Idaho is so deeply a part of me that I probably don’t even recognize the ways it emerges in my writing. I never set out to write about the state in any direct way--but on some level, I am probably always writing about Idaho, or my childhood and family and everything else that is tied up in Idaho for me. It’s a place I love and a place that drives me crazy and, most of all, a place that I know. JW: “The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death” is such a funny, original, matter-of-fact depiction of the banality of afterlife. How did that story come about? SV: I wrote the first lines with no idea of what might lie behind them: “The food is excellent. The lines are never long. There’s nothing to do with your hands. These are the first things I told my son. Then we don’t talk again for something like 200 years.” I think the voice and the story’s conceit were built into those lines, and I spent a lot of time extracting the story from them. JW: “About as Fast as This Car Will Go” has flashes of autobiography. What do you do when you a story approaches the details of your own life? SV: I usually recognize it only after the fact, strange as that may seem given how obvious some of the connections are. I never set out to write about my life, even indirectly. But I always find, through the roundabout operation of the imagination, that I’ve returned to the same few preoccupations: absent fathers, criminal fathers, regretful fathers--they’re everywhere in my fiction. Not much mystery there: My own father went to jail, and then prison, when I was a boy. Yet nothing that happens in “About as Fast” happened to me. My father committed different crimes, and my family situation is much, much different, and I--crucially, I’d like to think--did not follow him into a life of crime. So far. JW: These stories often deal with the mythology and hypocrisy of religion, even its mystery. How did your lapsed Mormon faith figure in these stories? SV: More in the lapse than the faith, probably. Like a lot of people who have left a religion, probably, I was focused for a long time on the hypocrisy of the faithful and the failures of religion. But that is such a standard, clichéd pose--as if only the faithful are hypocritical or ignorant or deluded or weak. I wanted to write about doubters, denouncers, heretics. Though I have left the church, Mormonism is my heritage, and using the materials of Mormonism’s stories to write new ones--even stories that might seem heretical to some--became a way of keeping possession of this heritage.
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Review
"[A] slam-dunk debut." —O Magazine"Not only is each story brilliantly constructed, but the collection as a whole is an architectural masterpiece…They’re written smartly…there’s utter brilliance…It’s terrific fiction. Vestal seems to be a writer we can trust to wake us up gorgeously to a certain angry reason, a certain subversive truth." —Association for Mormon Letters"[A] darkly provocative story collection. Throughout these well-crafted stories, Vestal’s prose captures the gritty poignancy of western life." —Seattle Times"From lustful country boys who plot against the tiny dogs carried around by beautiful out-of-town women (lapdogs, the narrator explains, are "wrong" because they make "us feel defensive about our whole lives") to two Mormons out to bring a sinner back into the fold, Vestal cracks open the dry, dusty ground and lets the weirdness spill out. It's savage and apocalyptic and endlessly funny." —The Stranger"Vestal's anti-heroes may be rascals and lost causes, but they have a canny insight, humor and wisdom that I found irresistible." —The Oregonian"I cracked open the collection by Shawn Vestal and found a short story called ‘Winter Elders,’ which grabbed me from the opening line: “They materialized with the first snow.”…This is a tale of missionary work from the perspective of the target. And it is a dark tale. It’s also psychologically astute and elegantly written, like much of Vestal’s book.” —David Haglund, Slate "[Godforsaken Idaho] lies somewhere between the classically chiseled narratives of Richard Ford’s Rock Springs, the satiristic imagination of George Saunders, and the comic stylings of The Book of Mormon. Vestal’s dark, often very funny, and deeply probing stories have one foot in God-fearing Mormon country and another in godforsaken characters-at-the-end-of-their-rope realism." —Rebecca Bengal, Vogue "These are smart, ambitious stories that bravely barrel into unwinnable arguments…Thoughtful and cleverly crafted." —Billings Gazette "Diviner, the closing tale, is as hair-raising a depiction of Mormon founder Joseph Smith as there is." —Charleston Post and Courier "Brilliant in its world-building." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Full of believable and complex characters." —NY1"A provocative and revelatory debut." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review "Godforsaken Idaho is weirdly and wildly funny, a blistering set from a writer with a far-reaching range." —LA Review of Books "Shutter your windows—Godforsaken Idaho is an awesome storm of history, grit, and revelatory imagination. These stories take huge risks and simply do not falter. Shawn Vestal has set out to reimagine the American West, and he’s done so with the soulful, single-minded purpose of a half-mad pioneer." —Patrick Somerville, author of This Bright River and The Cradle "Shawn Vestal’s Godforsaken Idaho is a wickedly funny, surprisingly profound collection. These nine stories of prophets and parents, of doppelgangers and pocket dogs, form a thrilling introduction to one of the wryest, most inventive new voices in fiction." —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins "Godforsaken Idaho mixes the hardpan realism of Richard Ford's Rock Springs with the dreadful wonder of Dan Chaon's best stories. In the lyrical beauty of his sentences, in the brutal choices his characters must make, and in the heartbreaking landscape itself, Shawn Vestal finds startling moments of grace and unexpected redemption." —Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men "Shawn Vestal's short story collection Godforsaken Idaho is violent, full of dreamy ache. Whether it is celestial beings, father-son criminal duos, or murderous missionaries, Vestal draws vulnerable, beautifully bruised yet resilient characters." —Interview "Provocative, gritty, and highly imaginative, the stories in Shawn Vestal's Godforsaken Idaho form an impressive debut collection." —Largehearted Boy "The stories in Godforsaken Idaho are sprightful and imaginative, quirky, at times odd, employing a modern register that places them firmly within the canon of contemporary American literary fiction." —Bloom
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Product details
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Little A / New Harvest; Collectible/Signed edition (April 2, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0544027760
ISBN-13: 978-0544027763
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 0.6 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.3 out of 5 stars
137 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,447,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
"Gulls" and "Diviner" are the standouts in this collection. As in all collections, there are a few stories that are excellent, a few that fall flat, and many more that span the range.Unfortunately, "Gulls" and "Diviner" are the last stories in this volume, following up several surprisingly bleak stories. The weak links here are "Godforsaken Idaho," "Pocket Dog," and "About as Fast as This Car Will Go," which unfortunately form a block in the beginning of the volume that considerably dampened my enthusiasm after "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death," which has some traces of very dark religious humor. Based on the descriptions, I'd expected these stories to be amusing. Some are, but most are bleak. There's a sense of haunted futility hanging around some of these characters that stuck with me after I'd finished the stories.
I'm not a heavy reader in the past year or so I decided to re read some authors I read as a young man, I read Huxley, Orwell (you gotta read Down and out in Paris and London), Steinbeck, Jack London these were all very good. I then read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn because I wanted to try something more contemporary and am glad I did, then I looked for something real contemporary I'm fairly poor so I looked for a cheap kindle offering. I saw Godforsaken Idaho was highly rated so I tried it, it kept my attention from the beginning. Much of the story takes place in the afterlife which was something of a monotonous institutional place where people entertain themselves by reliving the favorite parts of their lives over and over. The most interesting parts of the book are (I think ) directly from the authors life they describe the life of a boy who goes to live with his recently paroled father. Dad was having trouble getting work and after a while starts to disappear for a few days at a time(he's burglarizing homes), after a while dad decides to show his son the ropes and brings him along. The boy loves the excitement of it(reminds me of my youth)..
Shawn Vestal writes beautifully. Each story in this book grabbed my attention until read. The first book gives the reader a new twist on a timeless subject. In the next collection, the Idaho towns mentioned were those of my LDS ancestors and now cousins, the ancestors founders and pillars in the LDS church history, their bones buried near places he includes. Not an LDS person myself, I read the book with a different approach, more curious and actually entertained, than perhaps my LDS cousins would. I agree with one reviewer when he stated it would be good to know your LDS history to see Mr. Vestal's approach. Each story is quite different from the other, although on a similar thread. In fact, a couple of them are quite unsettling in a King-style way. A good, thought-provoking read.
I actually liked this book, and he does write interesting stories. But I came away from reading this with the distinct impression that he doesn't know how to write an ending. Also, I felt his stories were all unnecessarily depressing. His writing style and vivid characterizations made up for the other shortcomings enough to merit the four stars.I come from much the same background as the author, which is why I bought this book. I am from Idaho, and I grew up Mormon. I was thrilled to read that he must of had the same landlord I had in Coeur d'Alene, with the witches living across the street. These are really engaging stories! I can see in my mind the people and places in his stories, and he writes them about as real as possible. So I would recommend this book, while knowing that it won't suit everyone's tastes.
This collection of short stories are a debut effort by the author, who apparently is a disgruntled ex-Mormon. The writing is well done, although many of the situations and characters are similar across the various stories. The author pokes a lot of (not always gentle) fun at some of the more peculiar behaviors of individuals who belong to the Mormon subculture, but, unfortunately, one must almost already be conversant with that subculture in order to understand all the jibes. Without going into a spoiler, the last three stories at the end of book are based more on history than humor, and these three are the strongest group of stories in the book. If you enjoy the short story genre and are a Mormon, an ex-Mormon, or a person with a friend who can explain the Mormon culture and history, then you should really enjoy this book!
The characters in these stories are almost uniformly interesting, and the stories are well plotted. Vestal has decided to avoid story-ending epiphanies, a choice I can respect, but I think there needs to be some surprise, some insight at the close of a story to make it all worthwhile. In eschewing epiphany, and not offering anything compensatory in epiphany's stead, each story ends rather flatly, and each is accordingly somewhat disappointing. In sum, these stories are generally well conceived and well crafted, but with rather poorly wrought endings. Perhaps Vestal sees a point in this approach, but I did not.
Although I was disappointed in that Bill found so many negatives about so many towns. Then again, he may be right. I don't travel much anymore and I let Bill Bryson do it for me. He made me laugh so many times. I wonder why he never settled down in Littelton, New Hampshire, since that is about the only town he gave four stars to.
I've thought a lot about this book after reading it. It opened my mind that an eternal paradise, would indeed be boring to the point of being eternal hell. I knew there was something wrong with the concept of eternal bliss. This book convinced me of it. The creator would never put us through that.It made me rethink what the future most likely will be. Not anything like we imagine.
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