Name: Kyle Barron-Cohen's review of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Item: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Rating: 4
Author: Kyle Barron-Cohen

Wells Tower

A debut collection of darkly comic short works includes the stories of a man who is thrown out of his house when his wife discovers his infidelity in a bizarre way, teen cousins who share a woodland comeuppance, and a youth who flees to a carnival life after being bitten by his father.

Stories

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Kyle Barron-Cohen

I hardly ever read short stories. I tend to enjoy being wrapped up in a story longer, and spending real time with characters. It's the same reason I never really enjoyed poetry. But I do value the form's ability to speak volumes in a few lines or pages. And so it took the recommendation of someone who's opinions I value to read these stories by Wells Tower. And I'm glad I did. I think he may have single-handedly opened me up to short stories. The stories in this book were distinct from one another in a way that made it so easy to move on to the next one, but still savor what I had just read. They were funny and depressing and interesting and upsetting, and I found myself not wanting to start one on the subway in case my stop arrived before I had finished. So thanks Mr. Tower. You've re-introduced me to the value of short stories.

Cristi Marian

Will Vunderink

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his car's windshield doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. Wells Tower's version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. With electric prose and savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a profound new collection of stories.

Jazelle H

'Wells Tower's stories are written, thrillingly, in authentic American vernacular - violent, funny, bleak and beautiful. You need to read them, now.' - Michael Chabon

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Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

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Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower