Waste

by Andrew F. Sullivan

Overview

Larkhill, Ontario. 1989. A city on the brink of utter economic collapse. On the brink of violence. Driving home one night, unlikely passengers Jamie Garrison and Moses Moon hit a lion at fifty miles an hour. Both men stumble away from the freak accident unharmed, but neither reports the bizarre incident.

Haunted by the dead lion, Moses storms through the frozen city with his pathetic crew of wannabe skinheads searching for his mentally unstable mother. Jamie struggles with raising his young daughter and working a dead-end job in a butcher shop, where a dead body shows up in the waste buckets out back. A warning of something worse to come.

Somewhere out there in the dark, a man is still looking for his lion. His name is Astor Crane, and he has never really understood forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938103407
Publisher:	Dzanc Books
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Andrew F. Sullivan is from Oshawa, ON. His debut short story collection All We Want is Everything (ARP Books, 2013) was one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2013. Sullivan no longer spends his days handling raw meat, boxes of liquor or used video games. Waste is his first novel.

Editorial Reviews

"In some of the sharpest prose anyone is writing today, Andrew F. Sullivan vividly brings to life some of the most damaged and sorrowful characters ever encountered in fiction. Mark my words, Waste is going to be considered one of the best books of the year." —Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All The Time

"Balancing tenderness and brutality in the palm of his hand, Andrew F. Sullivan has carved out his own category to capture the ugliness of the world, his words always in search and service of some beating heart beneath the dirt. With Waste, Sullivan's deft prose hammers out a harsh, hard-fought harmony that compels you to sit down and listen." —Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness

"An unflinching, black-hearted story told with relentless, straight-razor prose. Waste, Andrew F. Sullivan's brilliantly concussive new novel, reminds me most of a literary cage match: busted, doomed characters tumbled together with no hope of escape—and it all makes for one hell of a show." —Michael Christie, author of If I Fall, If I Die

"Waste is the unholy amalgam of Pollack's The Devil All the Time, Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the films of Harmony Korine. Andrew Sullivan has written a scorcher. This book is riotously alive, pulsing with bad intentions—and very very dangerous." —Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City and Rust and Bone

"Waste is an insightful gut-punch to the soul for any reader tough enough to take it." —Lit Reactor

From the Publisher

2016-01-09
To enter Sullivan's (All I Want Is Everything, 2013) first novel is to spend quality time with some of the worst people in the world. While the story turns on a plot of death and revenge, Sullivan's true subject is the decay, human and otherwise, in the backwoods town of Larkhill, Ontario. Two killings occur late one night: Connor Condon, who's been a lifelong outcast because his name sounds vaguely sexual, runs afoul of local drug kingpin Astor Crane; Crane's two enforcers, brothers sporting identical ZZ Top beards, drill holes through his kneecaps. Meanwhile Jamie Garrison and Moses Moon, two barely functional workers at a meatpacking warehouse, strike and kill a lion belonging to Crane on the highway. While trying to elude Crane, Jamie has one of many blowups with his estranged wife and daughter. Moses searches for his missing mother, who is severely brain damaged from a bowling accident, and hangs out with his group of violent skinheads—one of whose father is an amateur surgeon who practices his cuts on his wife and child. When they finally meet the omnipotent Crane, his TV is symbolically tuned to The Wizard of Oz. The narrative isn't particularly linear, and all the characters prove beyond redemption. But Sullivan's bile gives the story a definite grisly appeal and is guaranteed to make you feel better about wherever you happen to live.

Kirkus Reviews