Downtown Owl: A Novel
Now a major film! New York Times bestselling author and "one of America's top cultural critics" (Entertainment Weekly) Chuck Klosterman's debut novel brilliantly captures the charm and dread of small-town life. Somewhere in rural North Dakota, there is a fictional town called Owl. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, but they do have grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect. Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. A history teacher, she gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer. Widower and local conversationalist Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met. But when a deadly blizzard--based on an actual storm that occurred in 1984--hits the area, their lives are derailed in unexpected and powerful ways. An unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where local mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing, Downtown Owl is "a satisfying character study and strikes a perfect balance between the funny and the profound" (Publishers Weekly).
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Community Reviews
"Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route."
That is the quote by Steven Wright that I kept thinking of during this entire book. I loved Klosterman's voice and how the description of the characters flowed. I loved the the dialog between the characters. But we went nowhere during the entire story.
I grew up in a small town in Iowa and can relate to a lot of what Klosterman writes about. The characters all made sense to me even if I didn't know why I was reading about them.
This would be a good book for anyone that grew up in a small town or who wants a view of what people are like in a small fictional town in North Dakota. All blended with a healthy mix of pop culture references.
That is the quote by Steven Wright that I kept thinking of during this entire book. I loved Klosterman's voice and how the description of the characters flowed. I loved the the dialog between the characters. But we went nowhere during the entire story.
I grew up in a small town in Iowa and can relate to a lot of what Klosterman writes about. The characters all made sense to me even if I didn't know why I was reading about them.
This would be a good book for anyone that grew up in a small town or who wants a view of what people are like in a small fictional town in North Dakota. All blended with a healthy mix of pop culture references.
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