Well

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Set in a working class suburb of Seattle, Matthew McIntosh's devastatingly beautiful first novel, Well, charts the lives of a vast cast of characters grappling with dark compulsions and heartrending afflictions. These are trapped people searching for escape or comfort in sex, drugs and violence, visions of apocalypse and creation, angles and killers. A brilliant meditation on the strength we have to recover from our failures, Well demonstrates McIntosh's unflinching vision and capacity for compassion. Wrought with emotion and sensitivity, Well is one of the most significant and daring debuts in American fiction for some time.

Reviews

"'The humanity of the people sings off the page... A book that still resonates in my heart.' Hubert Selby Jr; 'The real thing... an astonishingly sharp and satisfying debut.' Washington Post 'A warm portrayal of grey lives, akin to an American James Kelman or a literary Ken Loach.' Arena"

Author Bio

Matthew McIntosh has been published in Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol and Playboy. He is twenty-six years old.Here are the first (of many) reviews for Well:'McIntosh writes from the punched gut, the broken heart, the striving, splintered soul. [Well] reveals much contemporary American writing for what it truly, sadly, is: whimsical, icy, of emaciated compassion and, ultimately, utterly pointless. Only a writer of rare and precious talent can perform that ugly but necessary task and that is what, God help him, Matthew McIntosh is.' Niall Griffiths'Matthew McIntosh's panoramic, vastly ambitious d but novel is a wild composite of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son, John Updike's Couples and Rick Moody's Garden State. Giving his novel the multi-story quick-cut feel of a TV show like 'ER', McIntosh offers a beautifully elliptical, fragmented portrait of Federal Way, a suburb of Se