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Praise for Doom Town:
"The extreme state of mind or surprised wholeness [Blackwell] works out for his narrator toward the end that then reaches back to embrace all of the book is masterful and unrelenting. Other writers one can name who come to mind, but the Ford Madox Ford of some parts of Parade’s End, the naturalness of the strangeness, comes to mind together with the perhaps more obvious dooms that attract readers to The Good Soldier. A frankness in the account not confessional so much as a clear account of events almost too painful (and I have to add sometimes a little too unavoidable) that becomes an account near to tragic. My admiration to Gabriel Blackwell for a singular novel that I think will last."
-Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men
"Gabriel Blackwell's Doom Town is one of the finest novels about marriage and parenthood I've read, probing the ways in which the same bonds of familial and romantic love that connect us to others can become vectors of unfathomable injury and grief. It is a very rare book that's this carefully constructed, or that depicts a life so closely observed: Blackwell's attention to the obsessive, recursive workings of his narrator's mind becomes a brilliant character study, offering insight into a pain so deep it might, without Blackwell's precision, refuse communication or remedy or escape. An unforgettable read."
-Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"Doom Town feels like what might happen if Donald Antrim's Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World and Thomas Bernhard's Concrete met for coffee somewhere in near-future America. An exquisite book about the consolations and travails of language, about how we seek solace in words and too often find instead the means of augmenting our tendency toward denial."
-Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
"Doom Town is not so much about loss as about the absurd supposition that two knotted up beings might ever have imagined they could nourish a third. Like the giant cicadas in the book, Blackwell thrums right in on the knots. This is powerful writing, true and sure."
-Jen Craig, author of Panthers and the Museum of Fire
*
Add Doom Town on Goodreads
Order via Indiebound/your local independent bookstore
Order via Barnes & Noble
Order via Amazon
Excerpt available online:
"In Which He Explains About the Hair Dryer and Then Goes on to Attempt to Correct the Record" at Socrates on the Beach
Reviews:
Cobi Powell for Cleveland Review of Books
Travel Through Stories (YouTube)
Katharine Coldiron for Barrelhouse
Joseph Schreiber for Rough Ghosts
Marc Nash (YouTube)
Praise for Doom Town:
"The extreme state of mind or surprised wholeness [Blackwell] works out for his narrator toward the end that then reaches back to embrace all of the book is masterful and unrelenting. Other writers one can name who come to mind, but the Ford Madox Ford of some parts of Parade’s End, the naturalness of the strangeness, comes to mind together with the perhaps more obvious dooms that attract readers to The Good Soldier. A frankness in the account not confessional so much as a clear account of events almost too painful (and I have to add sometimes a little too unavoidable) that becomes an account near to tragic. My admiration to Gabriel Blackwell for a singular novel that I think will last."
-Joseph McElroy, author of Women and Men
"Gabriel Blackwell's Doom Town is one of the finest novels about marriage and parenthood I've read, probing the ways in which the same bonds of familial and romantic love that connect us to others can become vectors of unfathomable injury and grief. It is a very rare book that's this carefully constructed, or that depicts a life so closely observed: Blackwell's attention to the obsessive, recursive workings of his narrator's mind becomes a brilliant character study, offering insight into a pain so deep it might, without Blackwell's precision, refuse communication or remedy or escape. An unforgettable read."
-Matt Bell, author of Appleseed
"Doom Town feels like what might happen if Donald Antrim's Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World and Thomas Bernhard's Concrete met for coffee somewhere in near-future America. An exquisite book about the consolations and travails of language, about how we seek solace in words and too often find instead the means of augmenting our tendency toward denial."
-Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
"Doom Town is not so much about loss as about the absurd supposition that two knotted up beings might ever have imagined they could nourish a third. Like the giant cicadas in the book, Blackwell thrums right in on the knots. This is powerful writing, true and sure."
-Jen Craig, author of Panthers and the Museum of Fire
*
Add Doom Town on Goodreads
Order via Indiebound/your local independent bookstore
Order via Barnes & Noble
Order via Amazon
Excerpt available online:
"In Which He Explains About the Hair Dryer and Then Goes on to Attempt to Correct the Record" at Socrates on the Beach
Reviews:
Cobi Powell for Cleveland Review of Books
Travel Through Stories (YouTube)
Katharine Coldiron for Barrelhouse
Joseph Schreiber for Rough Ghosts
Marc Nash (YouTube)