The Alehouse at the End of the World - by Stevan Allred (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes reading group questions and notes from the author.

Book Synopsis

When a fisherman receives a mysterious letter about his beloved's demise, he sets off in his skiff to find her on the Isle of the Dead. The Alehouse at the End of the World is an epic comedy set in the sixteenth century, where bawdy Shakespearean love triangles play out with shapeshifting avian demigods and a fertility goddess, drunken revelry, bio-dynamic gardening, and a narcissistic, bullying crow, who may have colluded with a foreign power. A raucous, aw-aw-aw-awe-inspiring romp, Stevan Allred's second book is a juicy fable for adults, and a hopeful tale for out troubled times.

From the Back Cover

This is an old story, a story of a tyrant and a rebellion, of monsters and humans, of love and death. Know this: there are creatures who travel back and forth from the spirit world to the land of the living. There are moments when things both sacred and mundane slip the bounds of time and pass through from one side of the mortal veil to the other--a breath of song, an ancient incantation, a blade, a bucket, a silver chain. Fate demands that it be so and plays an endless game of gods and goddesses, of regents and rebels, of lovers and fools. The coin is tossed, spinning life and death through the air, and here, as the fire burns low and the hour grows late, the telling begins.

Review Quotes

"Sparked with risqué humor, the nearly Sisyphian questing of the fisherman devolves into a series of increasingly absurd and astonishing scenarios, all underscored with a strong thematic element of hope. Scholars of myth and lore, and readers prepared to be swept away on someone else's trip (perhaps of the hallucinogenic variety), will be enthralled."
--Publishers Weekly

"Richly conceived, enjoyable, and a treat for readers of myths and legends." --Kirkus Reviews

"The Alehouse at the End of the World weaves together mythic circumstances and language to form a tale of heroism, self-sacrifice, and love that speaks to turbulent times." -- Meagan Logsdon, Foreword Reviews

"The Alehouse at the End of the World will take you on a fast-moving ride through sixteenth century farce with a present tense echo effect. Bard-like in its constellation of bird-gods and rough hewn characters tossed around like breadcrumbs, the epic voyage catches you between laughter and a tear forming at the edge of your eye. Like life does."
--Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan

"The talented and erudite Stevan Allred is a natural storyteller, weaving together in The Alehouse at the End of the World various threads of Eastern and Western myth, fable, and legend, into an inviting, raucous romp through the lands of the Dead, where a lonely fisherman, accompanied by an entertaining cast of Avian co-conspirators, wanders in search of his long-lost beloved. You will frequently gasp, occasionally wring your hands, and always delight at Mr. Allred's sharp ear for dialogue, unerring instinct for suspense, and magisterial command of the fanciful world that may await us all in our next life."
--Michael Shou-Yung Shum, author of Queen of Spades

"Stevan Allred, armed with an abiding love of narrative, and an arsenal of sentence-by-sentence wit and tumble, draws us into an epic battle for the soul of the afterworld, and we are led ever on by language dangerously funny. The creatures that illuminate this journey with their eternal ponderings and arguments, are not necessarily human except in their search for reason and love, driven as they are by power, sex, and the beautiful mystery of death."
--Joanna Rose, author of Little Miss Strange

"Alehouse echoes ancient myths of creation and undoings in the practice of love with a blend of Shakespearean comedy and Melvillian language on a classic odyssey to the end of the world and beyond. Trust me, people. This is the wildly inventive and lovingly hilarious work of a master craftsman."
--Robin Cody, author of Ricochet River

"The Alehouse at the End of the World will swallow you whole. You'll land on the Isle of the Dead and walk with the fisherman who longs for his beloved. The crow will repel you with his solipsistic drama, and the goddess will seduce you as part of her plan. Stevan Allred's luscious language drives the novel, and his playful remix of lyrics and religious systems satisfies deep questions about the afterlife and the soul, which he describes as 'a vibration so quiet it can scarcely be heard... the thing that gives self-awareness.' Reading this novel delights like a fine ale."
--Kate Gray, author of Carry the Sky

"Crows and fishermen, gods and goddesses, love and deceit, boats full of the dead, clams that are much more than clams, an island inside the belly of the beast, and batches and batches of ale. The Alehouse at the End of the World is a comic epic that made me feel like us messy mortals can actually make a difference."
--Yuvi Zalkow, author of A Brilliant Novel in the Works

"Allred's imagination staggers the imagination."
--Jan Baross, author of José Builds a Woman

"The Alehouse at the End of the World mines our primal desire to go through the looking glass or the back of the wardrobe. Stevan Allred is an ingenius guide. His Isle of the Dead is a dark place that crackles with life, full of shapeshifting, bed-switching heros fighting for the fate of the living world. An epic tale from a master storyteller."
--Scott Sparling, author of Wire to Wire

"Stevan Allred has spun an original myth with its own vocabulary and weather system. The imagery alone has impressed new memories upon my psyche. Peculiar and inventive yet true to the human condition, The Alehouse at the End of the World holds familiar tyrants and temptations, confronted in the most unexpected ways by an unforgettable cast. The experience I found in these pages is the reason I read--to reach inconceivable places, to be touched, to be changed. By canoe, winged goddess, or whale, I would follow Allred anywhere."
--Renee Macalino Rutledge, author of The Hour of Daydreams

"There's all manner of craziness in The Alehouse at the End of the World: a giant beast who's swallowed the spirit world, a hairless blue fisherman, a trio of shape-shifting god-birds, a self-aggrandizing (Trumpian?) crow, The Isle of the Dead, a feathered goddess, and a dead woman who's.... well, you'll see. Yet underneath these fantastical guises, lies the same hearts that can be found in all of us; some are kind, some are driven, some are evil, some are insatiable, and in spite of their non-human forms, they are all so very human. In this magical world, the net of a dark fate tightens around the existence of this motley crew, and an apocalypse brews on the horizon."
--Dianah Hughley, bookseller, Powell's City of Books

Praise for A Simplified Map of the Real World (paperback: Forest Ave, 2013, audiobook narrated by the author: Blackstone Audio, 2018)

"We're all in this book. And that's quite a triumph."
--Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

"Fun to read and funner to recommend."
--Brian Doyle, author of Mink River

"Beautifully crafted and marked by incisive wit."
--Kristine Morris, reviewer, Foreword Reviews

"Stevan Allred's stunner of a debut novel is a complex portrait of small-town life." --Maria Anderson, reviewer, Necessary Fiction

About the Author

Stevan Allred lives in Portland, Oregon, halfway between Hav and the Isle of the Dead, which is to say he spends as much time burrowed into his imagination as he possibly can. He is the author of A Simplified Map of the Real World: The Renata Stories, and a contributor to City of Weird: 30 Otherwordly Portland Tales.