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Overview
New York Times bestselling author and “oneofAmerica’stop cultural critics” (Entertainment Weekly) Chuck Klosterman’s debut novel brilliantly captures the charm and dread of small town life—now available in trade paperback. Somewhere in rural North Dakota, there is a fictional town called Owl. They don’t have cable. They don’t really have pop culture, but they do have grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. But that’s not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it’s perfect. Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. A history teacher, she gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer. Widower and local conversationalist Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. They all know each other completely, except that they’ve never met. But when a deadly blizzard— based on an actual storm that occurred in 1984—hits the area, their lives are derailed in unex- pected and powerful ways. An unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where local mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing, Downtown Owl is “a satisfying character study and strikes a perfect balance between the funny and the pro- found” (Publishers Weekly).
Synopsis
New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Kosterman's First Novel
Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.
Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met.
Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The...
The Washington Post - Edward Schwarzschild
[Klosterman] leads us back to North Dakota in this thoroughly engaging novel…Given such appealing locals and the way Owl itself emerges as a memorable character, it's tempting to compare this novel with Sherwood Anderson's classic portrait of small-town American life, Winesburg, Ohio. But no one in Winesburg listened to Ozzy Osbourne. And Klosterman is much funnier than Anderson.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"An astonishingly moving book, a minor masterpiece in the genre we might call small-town quirkiana." — The Boston Globe"It's tempting to compare this novel with Sherwood Anderson's classic portrait of small-town American life, Winesburg, Ohio. But no one in Winesburg listened to Ozzy Osbourne. And Klosterman is much funnier than Anderson." — The Washington Post
Edward Schwarzschild
[Klosterman] leads us back to North Dakota in this thoroughly engaging novel…Given such appealing locals and the way Owl itself emerges as a memorable character, it's tempting to compare this novel with Sherwood Anderson's classic portrait of small-town American life, Winesburg, Ohio. But no one in Winesburg listened to Ozzy Osbourne. And Klosterman is much funnier than Anderson.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Four books of nonfiction (Fargo Rock City; Klosterman IV; etc.) and a steady magazine presence have established Klosterman as a pop culture writer known for his air-quotes wit. There's plenty of that sensibility in his first novel, and fans and detractors alike may be pleasantly surprised to find Klosterman delving beneath the quirky surfaces of Owl, N. Dak., the "overtly idyllic" but "paradoxically menacing" town that provides a perfect backdrop for the author's sense of humor. (The time in which the novel takes place-1983, an era of Def Leppard and feathered hair-tickles the author's love of the vapid.) The book shifts perspective among three Owl residents: Mitch, a smart teenager who's "not clutch" on the football field or with girls; Julia, a teacher fresh out of college and discovering an affinity for booze and beaus; and Horace, a widower whose life revolves around coffee and bull sessions. Though no single narrative line binds the three-the event that ultimately unites them is a creaking deus ex machina-Klosterman creates a satisfying character study and strikes a perfect balance between the funny and the profound. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Welcome to Owl, ND, circa 1984, a town of some 800-plus souls located somewhere between Winesburg, OH, and Twin Peaks, WA. Folks feel rooted here. Most of us know one another so well, we're sort of like a big family. Here, in Owl, dating involves a lot of desperation, and serious drinking is still considered a productive avocation. Of course, the high school, which sometimes attracts teachers who've been educated abroad, in places like Minot or even St. Paul, is a big deal: the time the Owl Lobos got covered on the national news ranks right up there with Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Angie Dickinson in the North Dakota pantheon. Oh, and there's also that "Gordon Kahl incident," in which a protestor killed two federal marshals over a tax dispute-but we figure every town has its problems. We're not so much bitter, really, as dazed and confused. Klosterman (Fargo Rock City), who has previously written mainly about bands with names like OutKast, devotes his first novel to us. You'll want to check it out from your local public library. Owl's may be not so different from where you live. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/08.]
—Bob Lunn