Then Came the Evening
Published on 5. April 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-4088-0807-8 (ISBN)
Description
Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his home reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding in the road. Nearly two decades later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenaged son, has come to claim the father he's never known, and Iona, Bandy's ex-wife, has come on the heels of her son. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But amidst the ice and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, they attempt to piece back together a family that never was, and to discover if they belong together at all. With resolute honesty and restrained beauty, Brian Hart explores the hopes and limitations of his characters as they struggle toward a shared future.
Reviews / Votes
'Brian Hart's Then Came the Evening shows the hidden America, a world of remote holdings, long memories, fierce yearnings, and violent strivings. He dramatises this world with an immense care and tenderness. There is a deep feeling in the book for the gnarled landscape itself, its stark beauty, but even greater emotion surrounds the characters that inhabit it. Their efforts to live together and love each other are depicted with a grace and understanding which is rare and memorable' Colm Toibin 'An edgy and affecting debut from a writer already bursting with promise and achievement. Brian Hart's narrative voice is as tender as it is unflinching - and his novel of love squandered and oh-so-nearly retrieved is a triumph' Jim Crace 'Quietly exceptional ... The author is ... an astute observer of the transitional Western landscape' New Yorker 'The book we've enjoyed more than any other this month is this debut novel by Idaho writer Brian Hart. ... Told with a stark narrative voice that reflects the harsh unforgiving subject, the comparisons to Cormac McCarthy are already coming thick and fast' GQMore details
Other editions
Additional editions
Brian Hart
Then Came the Evening
E-Book
04/2010
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€7.49
Available for download
Person
Brian Hart was born in Idaho. He spent years working as a janitor, carpenter, welder, and commercial fisherman before earning his M.F.A. from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He was the winner of the 2005 Keene Prize, the largest student prize for literature at the University of Texas. Then Came the Evening is his first novel.