The Night Train: A Novel

by Clyde Edgerton

Overview

In 1963, at the age of 17, Dwayne Hallston discovers James Brown and wants to perform just like him. His band, the Amazing Rumblers, studies and rehearses Brown's Live at the Apollo album in the storage room of his father's shop in their small North Carolina town. Meanwhile, Dwayne's forbidden black friend Larry -- aspiring to play piano like Thelonius Monk -- apprentices to a jazz musician called the Bleeder. His mother hopes music will allow him to escape the South.

A dancing chicken and a mutual passion for music help Dwayne and Larry as they try to achieve their dreams and maintain their friendship, even while their world says both are impossible. In The Night Train, Edgerton's trademark humor reminds us of our divided national history and the way music has helped bring us together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316117616
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	08/07/2012
Pages:	215
Sales rank:	295,782
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Clyde Edgerton is the author of 10 novels, including The Bible Salesman and The Night Train. Five of his novels have been New York Times Notable Books. He lives with his wife, Kristina, and their children in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He holds a PhD in English Education.

What People are Saying About This

David Sedaris

How good it feels to throw back one's head and howl with a great comic novel. The 'burial tuck' alone should make The Bible Salesman a classic.

Editorial Reviews

"The Night Train is classic Edgerton, with crackling wit and lines that make you laugh out loud--but also classic is the great, generous heart at its center that leaves the reader filled with hope and compassion."--Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes

"Clyde Edgerton has an ear for the good stuff, and he has put music on the page for us to read."--Glenn Taylor, author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart

"How good it feels to throw back one's head and howl with a great comic novel. The 'burial tuck' alone should make The Bible Salesman a classic."--David Sedaris

"I don't know how Clyde Edgerton does what he does, how he makes me both happy and sad at the same time, but I'm glad he's doing it....Edgerton is funny and wise as ever and, somehow, keeps getting better."--Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

"I read Clyde Edgerton's new book with much delight and envy. He is at his subtle and clever best in The Night Train. Every page rings with the music of these characters' voices, stories, and songs. The novel tackles 1963 with complete abandon. As always, Edgerton's message is not there until you discover you agree with it. A beautiful novel."--Percival Everett, author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier

"Like all of Clyde Edgerton's work, The Night Train has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but what I love most about this novel is its hard-earned hopefulness that if music can change, perhaps hearts can as well."--Ron Rash, author of Serena

"Two music-mad boys live in divided communities, poignantly characterized by the burdens of their respective pasts....What happens between them is the work of a generous, restrained writer whose skill and craft allow small scenes to tell a larger, more profound story."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

PRAISE FOR THE NIGHT TRAIN

From the Publisher

"The Night Train is classic Edgerton, with crackling wit and lines that make you laugh out loud--but also classic is the great, generous heart at its center that leaves the reader filled with hope and compassion."

author of Going Away Shoes Jill McCorkle

"I read Clyde Edgerton's new book with much delight and envy. He is at his subtle and clever best in The Night Train. Every page rings with the music of these characters' voices, stories, and songs. The novel tackles 1963 with complete abandon. As always, Edgerton's message is not there until you discover you agree with it. A beautiful novel."

Percival Everett

"How good it feels to throw back one's head and howl with a great comic novel. The 'burial tuck' alone should make The Bible Salesman a classic."

David Sedaris

"I don't know how Clyde Edgerton does what he does, how he makes me both happy and sad at the same time, but I'm glad he's doing it....Edgerton is funny and wise as ever and, somehow, keeps getting better."

Tom Franklin

"Clyde Edgerton has an ear for the good stuff, and he has put music on the page for us to read."

Glenn Taylor

"Like all of Clyde Edgerton's work, The Night Train has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but what I love most about this novel is its hard-earned hopefulness that if music can change, perhaps hearts can as well."

Ron Rash

"The delightfulness of the opening scene sets the stage for this novel's key elements....Edgerton frames his sensitive new novel around the unlikely and disapproved-of friendship between Larry, the boy the Bleeder is teaching to play, and Dwayne, a white boy who fronts a group called the Amazing Ramblers and is determined to break out of town on a talent ticket. It is the wealth of well-understood characters that carries the reader through this engaging novel's easily consumed pages."

Brad Hooper

"The Night Train is classic Edgerton, with crackling wit and lines that make you laugh out loud--but also classic is the great, generous heart at its center that leaves the reader filled with hope and compassion."

Jill McCorkle

"Splendid...what James Thurber might have written had he lived in North Carolina."

THE WASHINGTON POST on Raney

"Whimsical, utterly original, ultimately brilliant novel of small-town North Carolina and Vietnam."

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES on The Floatplane Notebooks

"An American treasure...Edgerton's literary line goes back straight as an arrow to the likes of Sherwood Anderson and Mark Twain."

SAN DIEGO TRIBUNE on In Memory of Junior

"A vivid and affecting portrait of the way many of us struggle -- and, when possible, take comfort -- in the real world."

PEOPLE on Lunch at the Piccadilly

This short novel takes place during the turbulent early 1960s in rural North Carolina. Two teenage boys—one black, one white—develop a tentative relationship based on their devotion to jazz and blues. The author sets the stage with care, and the subsequent events are somehow both surprising and inevitable. Edgerton brings a community into focus for this brief snapshot of a turning point for two young men and a way of life. T. Ryder Smith narrates conversationally with a resonant tenor voice. His pleasant, slow Southern pacing fits the story. However, he is less successful with the dialog when his voice rises in pitch, giving most of the characters an undeserved whine. Recommended with reservations for literary audio collections. ["Recommended for all fans of literary fiction," read the review of the Little, Brown hc, LJ 5/15/11.—Ed.]—Juleigh Muirhead Clark, Colonial Williamsburg Fdn. Lib., VA

Library Journal

The beat of sweet Southern jazz and down-home rhythm and blues infuses Clyde Edgerton’s novel. Narrator T. Ryder Smith mimics the rival tempos in this story of two unlikely friends and their attempt to reproduce singer James Brown’s LIVE AT THE APOLLO album. Smith depicts the segregated South of 1963 with a tinge of melancholy and dark humor as white Dwayne and his black friend, Larry, find common ground in Dwayne’s band, the Amazing Rumblers. This NIGHT TRAIN is heartwarming and hilarious. It’s a must-listen for fans of Edgerton and stories about artists finding their voices. R.O. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2011 - AudioFile