Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle audiobook

Wolf in White Van: A Novel

By John Darnielle
Read by John Darnielle

Macmillan Audio 9780374292089
5.37 Hours • Unabridged
Format : Digital Download (In Stock)
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    ISBN: 9781427251886

Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fictionWinner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adultsWelcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

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Summary

Summary

A GQ Pick for One of Three Big Novels of the Month for September 2014

Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award

A New York Times bestseller

Winner of an 2015 YALSA Alex Award for the 10 Best Adult Books That Appeal to Teen Audiences

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014

Among longlisted titles for Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2014

Winner of NPR Best Book of the Year, 2014

Among longlisted titles for Boston Globe Best Books of the Year, 2014

Among longlisted titles for Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year, 2014

Among longlisted titles for National Book Awards - Longlist, 2014

Among longlisted titles for Buzzfeed Best Books of the Year, 2014

Among shortlisted titles for L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist, 2015

Winner of ALA Alex Awards Winner (Adult for Young Adults), 2015

Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fictionWinner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adultsWelcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“An electric debut novel.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“The best rock novel of the year.” —Rolling Stone
“[Wolf in White Van] will back you onto your heels with its capacity for inventiveness in structure, story, and line writing.” —GQ, The Three Big Novels of the Month, September 2014
“A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt.” —New York Times Book Review
“This puzzle-like book, riddled with pulp allusions, proves Darnielle’s narrative skill.” —Time Out New York (4 stars)
“Darnielle specializes in impressionistic, highly literate lyrics delivered in a stark, declamatory voice…A pop culture infused novel that thoughtfully and nonjudgmentally considers the dark side of nerddom.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“If ever a first novel landed with a joyful noise, it’s Wolf in White Van.” —Publishers Weekly
“Beautifully written psychological fiction for sophisticated readers, with not much else like it out there.” —Library Journal
“Narrating one’s own novel can be tricky, especially if it’s a complex work, but John Darnielle does an excellent job…Darnielle’s performance can seem distant at times even though he keeps a steady pace and provides good projection. However, the distance makes much more sense as listeners learn more about the protagonist—a man who, it turns out, has survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face who runs a role-playing game through the mail from the isolation of his small apartment. Darnielle’s narration strengthens the emotional complexity of the story, enhancing the listening experience.” —AudioFile
“John Darnielle's amazing novel digs into an artist's unspoken fears . . . Like Darnielle's songwriting, the prose is often cryptic and then stunningly clear, microscopically specific and then audaciously grand. The words soothe for sentences at a time, then strike with blunt force. —Carl Wilson, Slate
An electric debut novel. —O: The Oprah Magazine
A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt. —Ethan Gilsdorf, The New York Times Book Review
John Darnielle is a great songwriter, tipping light toward every kind of human suffering, and his powers are on full display in Wolf in White Van. The prose lives like Sean's imagination: a breathing, glowing thing. In Darnielle's novel, as in his songs, the monstrously true and unbelievably beautiful press up against one another. Together, they begin to dance. —Carmen Maria Machado, NPR.org
Possibly the best novel of the year. —Chicagoist
What drives Wolf in White Van is Mr. Darnielle's uncanny sense of what it's like to feel marginalized, an outsider, a freak. He has an instinctive understanding of fetid teenage emotional states and the ‘timelines of meaningless afternoons that ended somewhere big and terrible' . . . [A] strange and involving novel. —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
An incredible feat. —The AV Club, (Grade: A)
[Wolf in White Van] will back you onto your heels with its capacity for inventiveness in structure, story, and line-writing. —GQ, The Three Big Novels of the Month, September 2014
A tremendous literary achievement. —Cristina Fries, Zyzzyva
Wolf in White Van is a novel that unspools rather than reads. Told in a tricky, deftly structured reverse chronology, the narrator, Sean Phillips, backtracks to a traumatic teenaged event . . . Darnielle has a masterful way of putting the reader in the position of reverse engineer. . . [His] is an art that spins pain into gold. —Emily M. Keeler, The Hairpin
The best rock novel of the year. —Rolling Stone
Right up to its tense closing scene, Wolf in White Van is a quietly bracing novel about the power--but also the isolation--of an overactive imagination. Without becoming sentimental or excessively bleak, Darnielle has created an empathetic character study: sustained eye contact with a person from whom most would avert their glance. —Lindsay Zoladz, Bookforum
A dark, nerdy delight. —Paul Constant, The Stranger
John Darnielle's brain seems like it runs at just a slightly higher RPM than other people's . . . [Wolf in White Van] unfolds like a labyrinthine treasure map, one in which the treasure chest keeps moving but you're careening toward it regardless, and also you're a little scared of what you'll find when you get there. —Emma Silvers, The San Francisco Bay-Guardian
Wolf in White Van will provoke you, and interest you, and move you. —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly
One of the most intense reads of the year . . . surreal, emotionally explosive, and often weirdly funny . . . What makes one person wander into a fantasy world and then wander back out again, unscathed, while another is disfigured by it for life? The way that Darnielle forces you to think about these issues, in a variety of situations, will give you chills. Nothing is more terrifying, and more honest, than a story that acknowledges that there is no bright line between guilt and innocence. —Annalee Newitz, io9
This puzzle-like book, riddled with pulp allusions, proves Darnielle's narrative skill. —Time Out New York (Four Stars)
[A] powerful novel . . . Darnielle layers invisible causation, or mechanisms of denial, or signs of an unstable personality, into the narrative with enviable subtlety . . . An impressive achievement. —Sam Costello, Full Stop
A novel is the next logical step for someone who's filled 14 studio albums, 23 EPs, and four compilations with relatable characters, dramatic situations, and recognizably literary themes like spirituality, drug addiction, and more . . . [The reading is] compelling, and leaves little doubt that Wolf in White Van is the work of a real writer, not a well-connected blog star. —Pitchfork
Beautifully written psychological fiction for sophisticated readers, with not much else like it out there. —Robert E. Brown, Library Journal
If ever a first novel landed with a joyful noise, it's Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle. —Publishers Weekly
A pop culture-infused novel that thoughtfully and nonjudgmentally considers the dark side of nerddom. —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
John Darnielle's novel moves through the mind like a dark-windowed car through a sleepy neighborhood: quiet, mysterious, menacing, taking you places you will never, never get out of your head. —Daniel Handler
Wolf in White Van is utterly magnificent. I was surprised and moved and amazed page after page after page. I am talking about audible gasp type stuff, and also deeper, interior gasps of reflection and astonishment and gratitude. This story is a hard and beautiful human puzzle that will be a pleasure to solve and resolve over many readings. And you can quote me on that. Every day. That is all. —John Hodgman
I can't remember the last time I so willingly followed a narrator into a frame of mind this splintered. (It helps that he's mostly wry about it.) As you read you waver between suspicions that the world itself is ill-made, and concern that the fundamental fault lies within our very brains. As for the writing, I'd go for anything else Darnielle writes like a shot. —Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird
Wolf in White Van is John Darnielle's savage genius gone free range. A meditation on monstrosity, isolation, escape, and transformation, this trance of a novel lures us deep into the labyrinth of one young man's imagination. What we find there is alluring and feral, raw, unflinching and exquisite. Absolutely fucking brilliant. —Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn
I loved everything about this book. Blisteringly authentic--like a garage-made bomb on a slow-burning fuse, or like Darnielle set out to adapt an old Iron Maiden T-shirt as a literary novel and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. —Austin Grossman, author of Soon I Will Be Invincible and You
Wolf in White Van is a testament to the ways in which all of us use imagination to survive, and the ways in which that same imagination can take over our lives until there's little else left. It brings us inside both the reality and the fantasy of day-to-day life in the way that only John Darnielle can. Read this book. You'll never hold another one like it. —Joseph Fink, creator of Welcome to Night Vale

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Author

Author Bio: John Darnielle

Author Bio: John Darnielle

John Darnielle is an author whose first novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award nominee, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction, and widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. He is the writer, composer, guitarist, and vocalist for the band the Mountain Goats.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download
Category: Fiction/Literary
Runtime: 5.37
Audience: Adult
Language: English

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