The Recipe for Revolution: A Novel - Hardcover

Chute, Carolyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080212951X ISBN 13: 9780802129512

Publisher: Grove Press, 2020

Synopsis

Nationally bestselling author and winner of the PEN New England Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction, Carolyn Chute, returns with The Recipe for Revolution, a searing portrait of class, politics, and brewing social change

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

 

            Bree spreads her ringless hand on the thick stapled document lying between three empty coffee mugs on the long leafed table.  She says, “What is this?”

            He is just now entering the room with two more mugs, these with maple milk in them, one for her, one for him.  His eyes widen. “Oh that.  Well, in this world there’s your Recipe.  Then there’s their Recipe.”

            Her voice has always a smoky edge.  “Project Megiddo it says.  It’s the FBI.  But what are you doing with it?”  She giggles.

            He positions the two brimming mugs on the table.  He glances at her face which is purposely hidden by squiggles and twists of shining young-girl-hair, perfectly orange hair, her face deformed by whatever it was that went wrong when she was the size of a thumb...or earlier...maybe when she was a mere idea...though who could imagine Bree, her honey-color eyes set apart like a funhouse mirror image and her mind that to him once seemed shy, nervous or something...but, no, he is beginning to understand that she is not nervous of anything.  He bets that the coil of her brain is radiating far more redly than her hair.

            He explains, “Everybody has a copy of that thing.  It’s not top secret.  It was issued to fire departments, cops, EMTs.  Rex...you know...he’s with the volunteer fire crowd.”

            “I figured.  Cuz of the red light on the dash in his pickup,” she says in a warm way.

            He grunts.  “Richard York.  He’s just like you.  He loves to share.  He’s probably churned out half a million copies of that report.”

            She giggles.

Review

Praise for Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

“Carolyn Chute is the James Joyce of the backcountry, a Proust of rural society, an original in every meaning of the word.”—New York Times Book Review 

“Quirky, intensely original...an intellectual page-turner...Chute combines strident political commentary with humor, surrealism, and inventive language... multilayered and complex, deeply critical of society but fiercely devoted to humans.”—O Magazine

“Deeply felt, scorchingly funny.”—Vanity Fair

“A 700-page piece of wonderful, infuriating, narrative energy...This is the work of a writer at the peak of her craft.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“As always Chute’s voice is smart, funny, and fired up about righting the wrongs of the world...fiery, impassioned, and unlike anything else you will ever probably read.” —Boston Globe

“[Chute] writes like a wild animal—ferocious, playful—making mincemeat of contemporary mores. Plenty to gnaw on here.”—More

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080212951X
• ISBN 13: 9780802129512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 700