Sometimes, a book doesn't lend itself to an "elevator pitch"--it can't be adequately described without an extensive quote. That's the case with Ben Metcalf's debut novel, Against the Country (Random House), a tale told by a droll, misanthropic narrator. He begins with his childhood, his family having left town life for the country, namely, Goochland County, Va.
"I was worked like a jack*** for the worst part of my childhood, and offered up to climate and predator and vice, and introduced to solitude, and braced against hope, and dangled before the Lord our God, and schooled in the subtle truths and blatant lies of a half life in the American countryside, all because my parents did not trust that I would mature to their specifications in town. That their plan busted would be of some comfort to me could I find fault in its formulation, but these two were not stupid: I have spoken at length with the both of them and judge each one to be of the highest wit. Nor were they cruel: my brother and sister will no doubt attest to the fact that our makers never left us hungry and that they seemed, on the whole, at least partial to us. Nor may I safely argue that their verdict on town life, whatever torments I might ascribe to the sentence, differed in any large part from my own."
But he denies that "town is the root of all harm to these United States.... I deny that tarnation has a grip only on those Americans who lay claim to more than one neighbor, and who direct no great suspicion at the universities...." He then proceeds to demolish the myth that rural is better in a crazy, exuberant, brilliant and brutal story. Pick any chapter, any paragraph, and lose yourself in an unusual, hilarious voice. --Marilyn Dahl, editor, Shelf Awareness for Readers