John Darnielle

Creating fantastical mail-order role-playing games from his apartment where he endures a life of solitude after a disfiguring injury, Sean is blamed for a disaster involving two high school student clients, an event that compels him to reevaluate his own past.

A Novel

Wolf in White Van

A New York Times Bestseller Nominated for the National Book Award, Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, and Winner of the Alex Award, "One of the Most Compelling Books of the Year" (Blake Butler, Vice) Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to explore. As the creator of "Trace Italian"-a text-based role-playing game that's played through the mail-Sean guides subscribers through his intricately imagined terrain, turn by turn, as they search out sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. But when Lance and Carrie, two teenaged seekers of the Trace, take their play outside the game, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, toward the beginning and the climax: the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, Wolf in White Van is "an indelible novel, a hymn for those who inhabit lonely universes, and a harbor for anyone who has sought refuge in a reality other than their own" (Patrick deWitt).

took me a while to finish this but this was raw as hell

fira

Simon Lund Larsen

What a brilliant and very different book and story. 

This is one book that I'll read again and again...

renee badenoch

I really liked this one. Unsurprisingly, John Darnielle can write. The book felt like a bunch of string together vignettes, but worked cohesively as a whole; though I thought the ending meandered a bit. I related a lot to remembering the past both through the events that are occurring in real life, and the imaginary worlds we inhabit within.

Trever

At the beginning it felt like 5 stars. The right combo of intriguing and thoughtful. Towards the middle I took a break, and when I came back and read Part 2, it didn't feel as affecting. It was still an excellent book, and for that, it gets 4 stars.

Sara McGuire

If you’re familiar with Darnielle’s music then you can expect a similar bleakness and frank poetry in his prose. I think your experience of this book benefits from not knowing too much about the plot - it reveals itself to you in pieces. I enjoy books with unconventional and unreliable narrators and this is definitely one of those books. 

Jas Wang

I'm sorry, 
I scrolled through the reviews like yeah I can see what people are talking about, but the whole concept is just kind of boring to me?
Not like bad boring, of course, I was intrigued by the synopsis to pick it up in the first place, but after 60 pages in I was like confused about what the story was going to be about or was I missing something that meant to be exciting?
But no, I gave it a second time because I didn't to give up a pricey book, but I skimmed through the second part and basically only read the dialogues and the few 'turns' or writing, and I reached the end.

Maybe it's because I'm more of action-fast pace books reader, and in this book, it was more of his thoughts on the action and not many actions or dialogues at all.

The cover is soooo pretty though.

Steven Ovadia

I don't read much fiction but this was really good. Dark and disturbing but amazing characters and interesting writing.

Wolf in White Van A Novel

Reviews