The Driftless Area - by Tom Drury (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

From the award-winning author of The End of Vandalism: "Equal parts heist caper, ghost story and romance . . . in prose that is spare and sly." (The New York Times)

Set in the rugged region of the Midwest that gives the novel its title, The Driftless Area is the story of Pierre Hunter, a young bartender with unfailing optimism, a fondness for coin tricks, and an uncanny capacity for finding trouble. When he falls in love, with the mysterious and isolated Stella Rosmarin, Pierre becomes the central player in a revenge drama he must unravel and bring to its shocking conclusion. Along the way he will liberate $77,000 from a murderous thief, summon the resources that have eluded him all his life, and come to question the very meaning of chance and mortality. For nothing is as it seems in The Driftless Area. Identities shift, violent secrets lie in wait, the future can cause the past, and love becomes a mission that can take you beyond this world. In its tender, cool irony, The Driftless Area recalls the best of neonoir, and its cast of bona fide small-town eccentrics adrift in the American Midwest make for a clever and deeply pleasurable read from one of our most beloved authors.

"Drury is nothing less than a wizard . . . Not since Twin Peaks has he rural surreal had such an artful airing." --The Boston Globe

"Superb . . . by one of America's finest, most imaginative authors." --San Francisco Chronicle

"With deceptively simple prose, Drury is able to evoke characters and scenes in just a few brush strokes." --Los Angeles Times

Review Quotes

Praise for The Driftless Area:

A New York Times Editors' Choice

A Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

"Equal parts heist caper, ghost story and romance . . . in prose that is spare and sly." --Amy Virshup, The New York Times

"Drury is nothing less than a wizard. . . . Not since Twin Peaks has he rural surreal had such an artful airing." --Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe

"With deceptively simple prose, Drury is able to evoke characters and scenes in just a few brush strokes . . . It's a murder mystery, a revenge drama, a comedy and a love story. . . . Drury does indeed bend one genre around another, and in doing so he's come up with a region entirely his own." --J.D. Dolan, Los Angeles Times

"Drury, like a master magician, seems confident and patient in what he has in store to mesmerize his audience. . . . [His] language is superb. . . . His many dialogues, full of wry wisdom, are pleasures to read and reread. . . . Readers will finish the book only with satisfaction, meditation and amazement at a dreamlike novel by one of America's finest, most imaginative authors." --Yiyun Li, San Francisco Chronicle

"Drury is an enormously skilled . . . storyteller. He delights in lulling the reader with meandering yet entertaining dialogue." --Robert Draper, The New York Times Book Review

"His stark, spare prose has a poetic quality . . . Not a word is wasted." --Lisa McLendon, The Wichita Eagle

"Drury writes in a plain, straightforward style that seems as transparent as water but, like the frozen lake over which Pierre glides on his late father's skates, is much deeper than it appears. Hardly a word is wasted in this fine short novel, and almost every detail is significant." --Timothy J. Lockhart, The Virginian Pilot

"Impossibly charming . . . A soft, dreamy, otherworldly tale, hypnotic in the telling." --The San Diego Union-Tribune

"An intriguing meditation on fate and coincidence that engages both on a visceral and an intellectual level." --The Providence Journal

"[Drury has] a deadpan-comic ear for small-town life and an eye for the singular moral codes of the characters who inhabit them." --Frank Bentayou, Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"A Drury story, like many by Alice Munro, is apt to jump its banks as it flows, wonderfully freeform, with devilment in its details. . . . The Driftless Area is about growing into life . . . There are twists worthy of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and vengeance, but not for the obvious reasons. A ghosting of the past seems always to haunt the present, and to be if not inexplicable, then at least ambiguous." --Art Winslow, The Chicago Tribune

"A small masterpiece." --Lincoln Journal Star

"Despite its supernatural elements, Driftless achieves a certain realness . . . It can be read in several hours and thought about for days, as intricate as it is simply put." --Austin Chronicle

"A near-masterpiece . . . Drury imbues the landscape with an impersonal, threatening and ancient chill that's a bit reminiscent of Twin Peaks, complete with sudden appearances of the supernatural." --Thomas Haley, Time Out Chicago

"The latest way station in [Drury's] fascinating artistic evolution is The Driftless Area, a fast, mean, beautiful little book about a man and a woman who become linked through a cycle of revenge . . . The Driftless Area is a book of hard, tangible surfaces, yet it is absolutely drenched in mystery." --St. Petersburg Times

"Hypnotic . . . [Pierre and Stella's] inevitable--exactly the right word, as you'll learn--affair sets in motion a chain of wild events that ends in murder and the triumph of love." --People

"With a spare and direct prose style, Driftless is full of wonderfully ironic characters and cool moments of small wisdom." --Gilbert Cruz, Entertainment Weekly

"Tom Drury's spooky neo-noir novel, The Driftless Area proves there is no one better at tangling up the lives of small-town Midwestern weirdos." --Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"Coen brothers-meet-David Lynch characters . . . . entertainingly weird detail that shines throughout." --Publishers Weekly

"Drury's evocative depiction of small-town life and an unpredictable plot with a touch of the supernatural will appeal to the same readers who enjoy independent films." --Library Journal

"[A] moody and mysterious tale. Over the course of four original novels, Drury has forged an entrancing form of midwestern paranormal noir. Deadpan wit, cosmic melancholy, characters both ethereal and down and dirty, predicaments a Beckett character would accept as inevitable, and a porous divide between the living and the dead add up to a delectably unnerving outlaw fairy tale." --Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Drury ties up all the threads (Shane, the fire, Stella) with consummate skill. . . . The bittersweet ending is a perfect mix of light and dark. Drury is a master at showing extraordinary things happening to ordinary people--and it's always a fun ride." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Its mix of Midwestern domestic detail, ghostly visitations, and crime noir likewise serve the cause of recognizing the complexity of human experience." --Alan Davis, Hudson Review

"A fast, mean, beautiful little book. . . . Absolutely drenched in mystery." --John Freeman, Hartford Courant

"In Tom Drury's splendid new novel the writing is like fresh lake water--transparent, revealing all depths, and so truly original. It has left me thoughtful, so caught up in the story, wishing it would go on and on. Even the wicked people in Drury's take are plainly seen and written about with understanding--that is, real charity." --Paula Fox, author of The Coldest Winter and Borrowed Finery

Praise for Tom Drury:

"Every page yields wonderful surprises--of invention, of insight, of language." --Richard Russo on The Black Brook

"Drury ranks right up there with Robert Stone when it comes to depicting the futility of American wanderlust." --Boston Herald on The Black Brook

"A unique voice, Drury will nonetheless appeal to fans of Richard Ford and Raymond Carver." --Booklist (starred review) on The Black Brook

"What excellent champagne Tom Drury is. He makes you feel smarter and funnier than you have any real right to. Under his spell you can appreciate both the scary emptiness and the scary fullness of your life, and when you've finished the bottle you wish you had more. Drury is a big-time American talent, and Hunts in Dreams is his best book yet." --Jonathan Franzen, on Hunts in Dreams

"Beguiling . . . Perceptive and captivating." --The New York Times on Hunts in Dreams

"A gorgeous, inexplicably sad and funny novel." --Salon.com on Hunts in Dreams

"Remarkable . . . Simply stuns you with the elegance and beauty of its writing." --Entertainment Weekly on The End of Vandalism

"Rich and readable . . . [Drury] possesses his made-up world with the same authority Sherwood Anderson brought to Winesburg, Ohio, and Faulkner to Yoknapatawpha County." --USA Today on The End of Vandalism

"Remarkably funny . . . astonishingly vivid." --Los Angeles Times on The End of Vandalism

"So amiably dense with anecdote and observation, the reader is bounced along by its energy." --The Boston Globe on The End of Vandalism

Praise for The Driftless Area:

A New York Times Editors' Choice

A Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

"Equal parts heist caper, ghost story and romance . . . in prose that is spare and sly." -Amy Virshup, The New York Times

"Drury is nothing less than a wizard. . . . Not since Twin Peaks has he rural surreal had such an artful airing." --Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe

"With deceptively simple prose, Drury is able to evoke characters and scenes in just a few brush strokes . . . It's a murder mystery, a revenge drama, a comedy and a love story. . . . Drury does indeed bend one genre around another, and in doing so he's come up with a region entirely his own." --J.D. Dolan, Los Angeles Times

"Drury, like a master magician, seems confident and patient in what he has in store to mesmerize his audience. . . . [His] language is superb. . . . His many dialogues, full of wry wisdom, are pleasures to read and reread. . . . Readers will finish the book only with satisfaction, meditation and amazement at a dreamlike novel by one of America's finest, most imaginative authors." --Yiyun Li, San Francisco Chronicle

"Drury is an enormously skilled . . . storyteller. He delights in lulling the reader with meandering yet entertaining dialogue." --Robert Draper, The New York Times Book Review

"His stark, spare prose has a poetic quality . . . Not a word is wasted." --Lisa McLendon, The Wichita Eagle

"Drury writes in a plain, straightforward style that seems as transparent as water but, like the frozen lake over which Pierre glides on his late father's skates, is much deeper than it appears. Hardly a word is wasted in this fine short novel, and almost every detail is significant." --Timothy J. Lockhart, The Virginian Pilot

"Impossibly charming . . . A soft, dreamy, otherworldly tale, hypnotic in the telling." --The San Diego Union-Tribune

"An intriguing meditation on fate and coincidence that engages both on a visceral and an intellectual level." --The Providence Journal

"[Drury has] a deadpan-comic ear for small-town life and an eye for the singular moral codes of the characters who inhabit them." --Frank Bentayou, Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"A Drury story, like many by Alice Munro, is apt to jump its banks as it flows, wonderfully freeform, with devilment in its details. . . . The Driftless Area is about growing into life . . . There are twists worthy of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and vengeance, but not for the obvious reasons. A ghosting of the past seems always to haunt the present, and to be if not inexplicable, then at least ambiguous." --Art Winslow, The Chicago Tribune

"A small masterpiece." --Lincoln Journal Star

"Despite its supernatural elements, Driftless achieves a certain realness . . . It can be read in several hours and thought about for days, as intricate as it is simply put." --Austin Chronicle

"A near-masterpiece . . . Drury imbues the landscape with an impersonal, threatening and ancient chill that's a bit reminiscent of Twin Peaks, complete with sudden appearances of the supernatural." --Thomas Haley, Time Out Chicago

"The latest way station in [Drury's] fascinating artistic evolution is The Driftless Area, a fast, mean, beautiful little book about a man and a woman who become linked through a cycle of revenge . . . The Driftless Area is a book of hard, tangible surfaces, yet it is absolute

About the Author

Tom Drury is the author of Pacific, The End of Vandalism, Hunts in Dreams, The Driftless Area, and The Black Brook. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and the Mississippi Review. Drury has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was named one of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists." He lives in New York.