Friday, September 12, 2014

Laird Hunt

Laird Hunt is the award-winning author of a book of short stories, mock parables and histories, The Paris Stories (2000), and five novels from Coffee House Press: The Impossibly (2001), Indiana, Indiana (2003), The Exquisite (2006) Ray of the Star (2009) and Kind One (2012), which was a finalist for both the 2013 Pen/Faulkner award and the 2013 Pen USA Literary Award in Fiction and the winner of a 2013 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction.

Hunt's new novel is Neverhome.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Hunt's reply:
On a family trip with my sister to the Baltimore area my sister and I slipped off to the marvelous indie store Atomic Books where I bought an album of Hot Stuff comics for my daughter and a copy of In the Woods by Tana French for me. French’s name has come up a number of times in recent months and I can see why. The novel is wise, gripping, dark, full of good (rather than drearily expedient) sentences and is just generally very difficult to put down. Exactly the right book for the imaginary free time I have at end of summer. I travelled too with David Mitchell’s Bone Clocks, which is excellent, and quite intricate, and suitably long, as one might expect, though it remains to be seen if it wins me over as emphatically as Cloud Atlas: jury is still out. Last though not least is All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, which is haunting and pleasingly unpredictable. It is by turns strangely soothing and at others like a punch in the eye: my kind of book!
Visit Laird Hunt's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Neverhome.

My Book, The Movie: Neverhome.

--Marshal Zeringue