Northline, Willy Vlautin
Northline, Willy Vlautin
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Northline

Author: Willy Vlautin

Narrator: Amy Boone

Unabridged: 4 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/28/2019

Synopsis

Fleeing Las Vegas and her abusive boyfriend, Allison Johnson moves to Reno, intent on making a new life for herself. Haunted by the mistakes of her past, and lacking any self-belief, her only comfort seems to come from the imaginary conversations she has with Paul Newman, and the characters he played. But as life crawls on and she finds work, small acts of kindness start to reveal themselves to her, and slowly the chance of a new life begins to emerge. Full of memorable characters and imbued with a beautiful sense of yearning, Northline is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America from a writer and musician whose work has been lauded as “mournful, understated, and proudly steeped in menthol smoke and bourbon” (New York Times Book Review).

About Willy Vlautin

Willy Vlautin is the author of the novels The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, The Free, and Don’t Skip Out on Me. He is the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. He lives outside Portland Oregon.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

Willy Vlautin combines a hard look at some of society’s fringe members with a whimsical touch that makes it all go down much easier. Allison Johnson is in her twenties, with an abusive, skin-head boyfriend, Jimmy, a bad alcohol dependence and not exactly the highest opinion of herself. When she disc......more

Quotes

“Honest, compassionate…Vlautin is mining a lost seam of American writing that celebrates the dispossessed, beginning with Caldwell and Steinbeck, continuing with Algren and Fante.” Independent (London)

“Vlautin is really impressive. His writing is resonant and economic and full of compassion, and although his message is slightly alarming—that unless the weak act, they will be the prey of the strong—he suggests that no act is too small to start the fight back.” Daily Telegraph (London)

“Vlautin uses the same strikingly spare and simple prose in Northline that distinguised his critically acclaimed first novel, The Motel Life. His essential subject, decent people enduring difficult lives, also remains the same, but here he takes a giant step in his growth as a novelist, plumbing much deeper into the emotional core of his characters. Northline recalls a dust-jacket blurb on an early edition of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: ‘Two hours to read, twenty years to forget.’” Booklist (starred review)

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