Shopping Bag
My AccountIn conjunction with yesterday’s profile of Jonathan Raymond, here is a spotlight on the books he has authored:
The Half-Life
Product Description:
When Cookie Figowitz, the cook for a party of volatile fur trappers trekking through the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, joins up with the refugee Henry Brown, the two begin a wild ride that takes them from the virgin territory of the West all the way to China and back again. One hundred and sixty years later, Tina Plank, an unhappy teenager, meets Trixie, a girl with a troubled past, and the two become fast friends. But when two skeletons are accidentally unearthed from their common ground, the lives of Tina and Trixie, Cookie and Henry are brought together in unexpected and startling ways.
Reviews:
“Terrific.The Half-Life gazes upon those fierce but ephemeral attachments that evade the history books. Multiple plots elegantly veer across the sprawling terrain.” (Village Voice)
“Raymond nimbly interweaves these parallel tales and manages to surprise.[a] subtle portrait of friendship and loss.[from] an astute, patient observer.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“Raymonds debut novel teems with carefully researched period details, intrigue.yet it never feels overstuffed.” (Washington Post)
“With The Half-Life, [Raymond] has come home prospecting for literary gold .Oregon has given him something back.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“The Half-Life is a potent fairy tale of who we are, how we got there, and the unknowable history under our feet.” (Los Angeles Times)
“A marvelous novel.a mystery as rich as the history of the Oregon territory itself.” (Vanity Fair)
Livability: Stories
Product Description:
A collection of rich, powerfully human stories from the author of The Half-Life and the movies Old Joy (“one of the finest American films of the year” — New York Times) and Wendy and Lucy.A tired man, struggling to overcome the loss of his wife in a car accident. Two old friends, hoping to rediscover their connection on a trip to the woods. A screenwriter hoping to hear news about the future of his film.
In Jon Raymond’s deft, nuanced stories, these and other characters contend with the frustrations, longings, and mood swings we face every day. Artfully conveying the feeling of lived experience, these stories brim with gratifying sensory detail: the sound of a tree root snapping underfoot, the smell of a roast, the stillness of the air after music has stopped. And, with careful observations and a humane spirit, Livability gives us a portrait of America, full of characters finding ways to survive their own choices.
Published to coincide with the national release of Wendy and Lucy, these refined, elegiac stories are the work of a writer with a long and promising career ahead of him.
Reviews:
“These nine gorgeous stories from novelist and screenwriter Raymond find pallid Northwesterners testing the moral perimeters of their decent lives. In ‘The Suckling Pig,’ set around the preparations for a dinner party, the divorced middle-aged host hires two Mexican men for some yard work at his suburban house, then adds them to the guest list to spur on what turns out to be a transformative and class-blurring evening. The wayward protagonist of ‘Train Choir’ hopes to make it to Alaska and find work with the fisheries, but she gets caught stealing food for her dog, setting off a chain of mishaps that sinks her deeper into a perverse, solitary rut. In ‘Young Bodies,’ 17-year-old Russian migr Kendra sneaks into the store where she works to return the money she’d stolen, only to get locked in the mall for the night with an increasingly unsympathetic co-worker. A sense of fragility pervades these characters’ lives, and as the upsets that threaten each of them simmer, Raymond reveals how close failure (and worse) lingers.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
