Wolf in White Van (Darnielle)

Book Reviews
The extreme premise of Wolf in White Van…makes it sound like a lesser Chuck Palahniuk novel. Yet it has a careful and almost cloistered air.... The novel's emotional range is narrow but deep. Mr. Darnielle seems to be indicating his agreement with something the novelist Richard Ford has said: "People always know more than I do, but what I know, I know"…What drives Wolf in White Van is Mr. Darnielle's uncanny sense of what it's like to feel marginalized, an outsider, a freak. He has an instinctive understanding of fetid teenage emotional states and the "timelines of meaningless afternoons that ended somewhere big and terrible."
Dwight Garner - New York Times


Sean conceives of a mail-based strategy game.... When one young couple’s attempt to find the Trace Italian in real life leads them to a fatal “terminus” in the desert, Sean revisits his own dark history. He tracks back through the branching series of choices that led to his disfiguring injury, the creation of the game, and the couple’s tragic end.
Publishers Weekly


Though in a way about sf, this debut novel by the lead singer of the Mountain Goats is not a sf story. It's essentially a character study about narrator Sean Phillips, a thirtysomething man with severe facial disfiguration.... Verdict: Beautifully written psychological fiction for sophisticated readers, with not much else like it out there. —Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A man badly disfigured in a gun accident ponders gaming, heavy metal, family, love and the crazed emotions that tend to surround our obsessions.... Sean is a consistently generous and sympathetic hero.... A pop culture-infused novel that thoughtfully and nonjudgmentally considers the dark side of nerddom.
Kirkus Reviews