Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories - Softcover

Udall, Brady

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393335542 ISBN 13: 9780393335545

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

“Funny, unpredictable, and abounding with strange beauty . . . a fierce new voice of the American West.”―Outside

Exploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall’s stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. From the night a six-foot-three Apache Indian holding a goat steps into a moonlit Arizona backyard in "Midnight Raid" to the pivotal moment when a man, delirious from a dental extraction, gets rescued by a stranger in the title story, Udall injects his stories and characters with equal parts darkness and humor. These are sad and sweet stories, moving from the familiar to surprising destinations. But even when disaster looms, Udall's fine comic sense sustains his men and women in their sometimes extravagant efforts to connect and cope. Plunged in the moment, these stories have velocity; they spray gravel as they take off.

About this title

Review:

The West is a pretty grim place to live, judging by the characters who populate Brady Udall's collection of short stories, Letting Loose the Hounds. Misfits, miscreants and outcasts all, his heroes stumble miserably through a desert landscape of "petrified wood and dinosaur bones," of failed marriages, dysfunctional families and their own aching loneliness in search of reconnection to the world they've lost.

What redeems this collection, and often the characters as well, is Mr. Udall's trenchant humor and sharp appreciation for the ridiculous. No one is more aware of the absurdity of his situation than the main character of "Midnight Raid" who is caught red-handed breaking into his ex-wife's house with a pygmy goat under his arm. In "Vernon" the narrator sees the irony in returning to his dead-end hometown after a semester of college: "I liked college . . . Just the idea made me ridiculously happy . . . But I had this nervous feeling I couldn't get rid of, like something in the bottom of my gut slowly eating at my insides . . . I came back to Vernon to stay." The only recourse for these lost souls are small, often funny, always sad acts of rebellion. Mr. Udall's West might not be a great place to live, but in Letting Loose the Hounds it makes for a compelling visit.

About the Author:

Brady Udall is the author of New York Times bestseller The Lonely Polygamist, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, and Letting Loose the Hounds. He teaches at Boise State University and lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and children.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393335542
• ISBN 13: 9780393335545
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224