Whiskey: A Novel

by Bruce Holbert Narrated by Bruce Holbert

Overview

Whiskey is bitter to swallow and burns pleasantly as it goes down, but has a lasting, powerful effect on listeners.

Brothers Andre and Smoker were raised in a cauldron of their parents' failed marriage and appetite for destruction, and find themselves in the same straits as adults-navigating not only their own marriages, but also their parents' frequent collision with the law and one another. The family lives in Electric City, Washington, just a few miles south of the Colville Indian Reservation. Fiercely loyal and just plain fierce, they're bound by a series of darkly comedic and hauntingly violent events: domestic trouble; religious fanaticism; benders punctuated with pauses to dry out that never stick.

When a religious zealot takes off with Smoker's daughter, there's no question that his brother-who continues doggedly to try and put his life in order-will join him in an attempt to return her. Maybe the venture will break them both beyond repair or maybe it will redeem them. Or perhaps both.

Whiskey is an audiobook about two brothers, their parents, and three wrecked marriages, a searching examination of family life at its most distressed-about kinship, failure, enough liquor to get through it all, and ultimately a dark and hard-earned grace. With an authentic literary voice all his own, Bruce Holbert traverses the harsh landscape of America's northwestern border and finds a family unlike any you've met before.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/29/2018
Holbert (Lonesome Animals) returns with a violent, gruesome, and beautiful tale that, despite its despondency, is perversely winning. The story is set in a hard-luck Washington town near the Grand Coulee Dam. Part Native American, Andre is a beloved math teacher and “minor tavern legend” known for his fierceness in bar brawls. His mother is a woman capable of putting “a year’s living into a long weekend,” as can his father (when he’s not locked up). Andre’s younger brother, Smoker, is a perennially broke, charming ladies’ man. All are alcoholics, vulnerable and vicious, damaged and doing great damage to one another. The novel darts back and forth across three periods in the family’s history. In the “Genesis” sections, which begin in 1981, Andre and Smoker fend for themselves in a dysfunctional household, and “Lamentations” describes the courtship and marriage of Andre and a fellow teacher. In “Exodus,” Andre, his marriage breaking up, accompanies Smoker to retrieve the latter’s daughter from a preacher’s remote, cultish commune, picking up an impressive litany of injuries—and a bear—along the way. The violence in this rangy, brilliant narrative is often grotesque, but this excess is tempered by dry humor, wonderful dialogue, and dark wisdom. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

"The manic energy and memorable characters in Whiskey aren't far off from those created by Joseph Heller and Ken Kesey in those classics." —The Inlander

“[A]s cool as a Western and as fundamental as the Bible. Reminiscent of stories by Cormac McCarthy or Annie Proulx . . . Whiskey punches you in the gut, a blow that lands right at your core.” —BookPage

“Holbert's prose crosses the coal-black comedy of Charles Portis with hallucinogenic Denis Johnson, a slapstick of grim manners above a howling abyss that is always audible.” —Willamette Week

"Holbert returns with a violent, gruesome, and beautiful tale that . . . is perversely winning . . . The violence in this rangy, brilliant narrative is often grotesque, but this excess is tempered by dry humor, wonderful dialogue, and dark wisdom." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[An] impressive novel . . . Like Cormac McCarthy, another bard of the modern West’s brutality, Holbert finds beauty and cruelty in the land, in the tease and punch of eloquently elliptical dialogue, and in the way humans struggle for love, self-knowledge, and a grip on life . . . He writes terse prose whittled to essentials and grained with vernacular . . . His characters may well brand a reader’s memory. A gut-punch of a bleak family saga that satisfies on many levels.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[A] bleak yet emotionally authentic chronicle . . . Resplendent descriptions and quick-witted dialogue serve as necessary counterpoint to visceral depictions of violence.” —Bill Kelly, Booklist

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-12-12
Three generations of a Native American family struggle with hard lives, bad choices, and alcohol in this impressive novel.In the summer of 1991 in the state of Washington, two brothers sit in their local tavern at a critical time. Andre is heading toward his second divorce from Claire, and Smoker (born Wendell but nicknamed for his boyhood habit of torching candy cigarettes) is hunting his wayward wife so he can retrieve his 10-year-old daughter, Raven. The siblings embark on an odyssey that weaves through the book in scattered sections. They capture a bear they keep in their camper for possible trade value and get involved in a variety of violence by fist and gun. As one character opines: "You boys ain't run-of-the-mill crazy." Other sections look back to the boys' youth, to the troubled history of their parents, hard-drinking Pork and sexually adventurous Peg, and to Andre's efforts to avoid whiskey and hold on to Claire. The jigsaw structure can frustrate, but Holbert (The Hour of Lead, 2014, etc.) is a canny writer, and soon the finely drawn fragments from the past percolate into 1991's narrative and go far to explain why the brothers are rolling toward some reckoning. Like Cormac McCarthy, another bard of the modern West's brutality, Holbert finds beauty and cruelty in the land, in the tease and punch of eloquently elliptical dialogue, and in the way humans struggle for love, self-knowledge, and a grip on life that won't just burn their fingers. He writes terse prose whittled to essentials and grained with vernacular: "He smelled gamey as an elk and his breath made an awful racket." His characters may well brand a reader's memory.A gut-punch of a bleak family saga that satisfies on many levels.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171982256
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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