2010
First Published
4.28
Average Rating
238
Number of Pages
Paul Dent, penniless and recently orphaned, hops a train in deepest Dust Bowl Oklahoma in the Spring of 1936, and winds up attached to the Federal Writers Project, one of the least understood, shortest-lived, and most impossibly ambitious government undertakings in the history of the country. He is assigned to capture the essence of the mountain towns of eastern North Carolina for a series of travel books no one believes will ever be published. There, among writers and cheats, arsonists and Reconstructionists, blind and deaf children and disease-ridden Senators, Paul will meet the love of his life and her lover, witness the awakening of one great novelist and the possible resurrection of another, discover more than one America that could have been, and confront the truth about his relationship with his unpredictable, brilliant, and Machiavellian older brother. There are echoes here of Laurel and Hardy, Bonnie and Clyde, Powell and Loy, Cain and Abel. It s a book of bunk, in other words. A collection of lies. A creation myth about a vanished country that may or may not have existed, and the very real, conflicted nation that has sprung from it. THE BOOK OF BUNK is the latest unclassifiable explosion of storytelling from Glen Hirshberg, the Shirley Jackson and International Horror Guild Award winning author of AMERICAN MORONS, THE TWO SAMS, and THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN.
Avg Rating
4.28
Number of Ratings
32
5 STARS
38%
4 STARS
53%
3 STARS
9%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Glen Hirshberg
Author · 15 books
Three-time International Horror Guild Award Winner Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman's Children, The Book of Bunk, the Motherless Children trilogy, and Infinity Dreams. He is also the author of four widely praised story collections: The Two Sams, American Morons, The Janus Tree, and The Ones Who Are Waving. A five-time World Fantasy Award finalist, he has won the Shirley Jackson Award for the novelette, “The Janus Tree”. He also publishes new fiction, critical writing, and creative nonfiction in his Substack newsletter, Happy in Our Own Ways (https://glenhirshberg.substack.com/), and offers classes and manuscript coaching and editing through his Drones Club West activities (dronesclubwest@outlook.com). He lives with his family and cats in the Pacific Northwest.
