“[Weil’s] language is exquisite, his sentences glorious. In fact, [he] writes the kinds of sentences you want to go sniff and then slosh around in your mouth for a while before heading into the next paragraph. The kind that make you set the book down and think, the kind that can break your heart with their truthful simplicity. . . . Refreshing and engaging.”—Ploughshares
“Full of tenderness and looming menace . . . Gripping . . . Weil meticulously imagines people and their histories, and presents them as a product of their places. This is perhaps the hardest thing for a fiction writer of any age, working in any form, to accomplish. . . . Keep writing novellas, Josh Weil, because you write very good ones. You think on it, and we’ll watch.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Weil’s prose is quiet and assured . . . These stories are real heartbreakers, ringing true with loss and loneliness. . . . Finely crafted . . . Unforgettable.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Keenly observed . . . Absolutely and utterly devastating . . . Weil’s major talent—and it is major—lies in making the gears and levers of the book operate seamlessly, like the engines and equipment that litter its pages. He writes with little pretense or adornment, content to let the story come to him. . . . Every word feels necessary. Weil’s keen observational eye brings the smallest details of the lives of these three men to light, and their acuity makes his other analyses gleam with truth. . . . Weil makes the reader aware of [his characters’] humanity, and their emotions and heartbreak give this book a quiet heaviness, like the Blue Ridge Mountains that loom in the background.”—The Rumpus
“Critics claiming that American short fiction is on life-support should sample the healing elixir of Josh Weil’s breakout collection. In this mesmerizing debut, Weil offers up three razor-sharp novellas . . . that ring sincere and rarely hit a false note. . . . These are quiet stories of struggle, survival, heartbreak and grace. . . . Readers will find glimpses of Bobbie Ann Mason’s depictions of the small-town poor mixed with Annie Proulx’s evocative landscape language. . . . [Weil’s] writing is understated [and] as strong as steel.”—Charleston Gazette-Mail
“Powerful, masterful, haunting, and utterly unique.”—Robert Goolrick
“Weil’s debut is a stark and haunting triptych of novellas set in the rusted-out hills straddling the border between the Virginias. . . . Taken individually, each novella offers its own tragic pleasure, but together, the works create a deeply human landscape that delivers great beauty.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A restive nobility binds the sorrowful protagonists of Weil’s stellar debut collection of novellas, each a tender anthem to a starkly unforgiving Virginia countryside and the misguided determination of its most forsaken residents. . . . Throughout, Weil limns a rugged emotional landscape every bit as raw and desolate as the land that inspired it, delivering an eloquent portrait of people who defiantly cling to a fierce independence.”—Booklist
“I was captivated and moved by each of these finely made novellas. The quiet, mostly ordinary lives of the characters who populate The New Valley shine with a strange and intense luminosity that is at times heartbreaking, at other times triumphant. There is a magic and gentle beauty in this book that makes me remember why I had always wanted to be a writer.”—Tim O’Brien
“Josh Weil’s debut book The New Valley has a sense of the notable on every page. This is the very rare but clear case of the sky being the limit for a young author.”—Jim Harrison
“Josh Weil is a terrific young writer. His sense of what is crucial and dramatic make his stories deeply alive.”—John Casey
“In these meticulously crafted narratives about rural life in the Virginia hill country, Josh Weil explores masculine loneliness with classic richness and depth. This is old-fashioned storytelling in the very best sense.”—Helen Schulman, author of P.S. and A Day at the Beach
“In Josh Weil’s soulful debut fiction, hard, wintery men bring the near-dead back to life. A steer, a tractor, a woman bolt upright, clearly heart-charged by the obsessive attentions of these cut-off men. The prose unfailingly befits the action and is percussively wrought and rich or else plain and grave but always deeply moving.”—Christine Schutt, author of All Souls and Florida, a National Book Award Finalist
“This is beautiful, heartrending fiction. With deep pathos and stunning imagination, Weil gives a powerful voice to lives too often ignored and throws brilliant light on places in our country—and our hearts—that are too often in the dark. The New Valley marks the arrival of an important new writer in American letters.”—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Corpus Christi: Stories
“While I read these novellas, I realized at some point early on I kept holding my breath. Why? Because Josh Weil's stories are about people who tell no one anything, ever—men who know more cattle than they do people, and who trust the cattle more. Men who shrug off their heartbreak and die with their secrets. By turns sweet, funny, heartbreaking, and terrifying, Josh Weil makes his quietly powerful debut.”—Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh
“Weil’s domain is the parallel world of rural America that still exists just outside the swaddled precincts of the 21st century. His prose—taut, precise, as unflinching as it is tender, particularly in ‘Ridge Weather’—suggests a strong new voice in American fiction.”—Mark Slouka, author of The Visible World
“Beware these seemingly quiet novellas: they hit hard. Josh Weil has created devastatingly memorable characters of people rarely noticed and never loved. With remarkable skill and insight, he has located the spot in the human heart where loneliness resides. Exquisitely written, deeply felt, and haunting, The New Valley is a beautiful book.”—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of The Scenic Route
“With The New Valley, Josh Weil makes a spectacular entry in the art of American storytelling. His rendering of place is strong as Flannery O’Connor’s; his engagement with the moral landscape as sure as Cormac McCarthy’s. In their contemplation of the past, Weil's characters—earthy, scrappy, often comic—seek restoration. These three fine novellas remind us with wit and energy that we are all in for repair.”—Maureen Howard
Read back to back to back, these novellas form a triptych—detailed works in their own right, they offer more than the sum of their parts when taken together. Weil meticulously imagines people and their histories, and presents them as a product of their places. This is perhaps the hardest thing for a fiction writer of any age, working in any form, to accomplish.
—The New York Times
Weil's debut is a stark and haunting triptych of novellas set in the rusted-out hills straddling the border between the Virginias. In "Ridge Weather," Osby, a hardscrabble cattle rancher, finds himself lonely and isolated after his father's suicide. In the aftermath he struggles to make some sort of a personal connection in increasingly desperate attempts to be needed by someone. In "Stillman Wing," the elderly Charlie Stillman, afraid of his own mortality, tries to reinvigorate his life by stealing and reconditioning a tractor, all the while maintaining a relationship with his obese, promiscuous daughter and coming to terms with the death of his barnstormer parents. "Sarverville Remains," takes the form of a letter from Geoffrey Sarver, a mildly retarded orphan, to an incarcerated man whose wife he has fallen in love with, and takes on the elements of a well-told crime story. All three pieces, despite their somber tones, offer renewal for their protagonists. Taken individually, each novella offers its own tragic pleasures, but together, the works create a deeply human landscape that delivers great beauty. (June)
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Set in a rural West Virginia valley, this debut novel by Fulbright winner Weil uses linked novellas to show how three loners, with the resilience to make one final connection, bring meaning to their lives. In "Ridge Weather," when Osby Caudill's father dies, Osby realizes they never were much company to each other. A local woman fails to seduce him, and having a renter doesn't work out. Only when he cures a sick steer does he connect with another creature. The title character in "Stillman Wing" is a cantankerous man whose daughter brings home lowlifes to sleep with her. Stillman derides her reckless behavior, but, afraid of losing her, acts recklessly himself by taking a moonlight swim in a toxic pond. "Sarverville Remains" is narrated by Geoff Sarver, a mentally slow man, who hangs out with younger troublemakers who go to Linda Podawalski for sex behind the local bar. Linda uses Geoff to get rid of her husband, but she also gives him the courage to strike out for land where Sarvers fled in search of a new life decades ago. Intense and satisfying; highly recommended for all public libraries.
—Donna Bettencourt
Intimacy eludes the misfits in Weil's debut, three novellas set in the backwoods of Virginia. In the slight first entry, Ridge Weather, father and son used to tend their five small herds of cattle together. Now it's all on the son, 38-year-old Osby, for his father has committed suicide. At least he still has the cows for company; his greatest fear is of a solitary entombment. Yet when a middle-aged divorcee offers herself to him, Osby bolts. It's a superficial story, leaving us wondering about the causes of the father's suicide and the son's ingrained isolation. Cause and effect are clear in the second entry, Stillman Wing. The eponymous Wing is a "fear-driven man" because while a child he witnessed the death of his parents, daredevil pilots, in a crash. Fearful of risk, Wing worked for 50 years as a mechanic for a moving-equipment company and failed to tie the knot with the carefree Ginny. His daughter Caroline (Ginny is long gone) has become the new risk-taker. She drives in demolition derbies. She binges, sending her weight to 300 pounds, and craves one-night stands. Wing loves her dearly, but his censoriousness drives her away. Now retired, Wing spends his time restoring a vintage 1928 tractor, his last love. The story is contrived and overly schematic. The third entry, Sarverville Remains, though too long and cluttered, has an undeniable power. Geoffrey Sarver is a mildly retarded gas-station attendant. After his kin, all hill people, disappeared, he was raised in foster homes (Weil captures their smothering condescension). Now 30-ish, Geoff hangs out with some high-school kids. They know a restaurant worker, Linda, who fellates them for free. In his artfully garbled voice, Geoffdescribes how he and Linda, trapped in a bad marriage, become friends. Their one date ends disastrously when the husband shows up. Geoff loses an eye, yet the showdown is also his long-delayed rite of passage into adulthood. Weil's empathy for his damaged people has not yet found a compatible narrative. Agent: PJ Mark/McCormick & Williams Literary Agency
