This Is the Place

by Peter Rock

Sixty-four-feet tall and made of metal, the neon giant Wendover Will stands in front of the Stateline casino in Wendover, Nevada and faces east. The sign under him reads "This Is The Place." Over a hundred miles away in Utah, across the salt flats, stands the statue of Brigham Young, atop his monument, proclaiming the same thing, "This Is The Place."

This Is the Place is the sinister story of an aged and lonely blackjack dealer living in Wendover, who becomes obsessed with a nineteen-year-old Mormon girl from Bountiful, Utah. It is a story of love, perhaps doomed, told by an endearing misanthrope who may be delusional, but who has managed to coalesce his manias into an alternative understanding that lies somewhere between Wendover Will's depravity and Brigham Young's

"The dispute between Will and Brigham is not for me to settle, nor would I want it settled. The words hang over the salt flats, the most forsaken stretch of earth, a terrifying expanse of sheer space, white, like another planet, hard and smooth where nothing can live. This all sounds so grim! I've known joy and I'll know it again. It's just that it takes work to get up the words to talk about love."

His love leads him to do a terrible thing, and he tells this story to justify himself. His words, seductive and convincing, draw the reader into a world where the supernatural takes on new meaning. It is a haunting journey to the extreme realities of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City and many places in between. Above all, it is an odyssey to the depths of love.

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent novel, Passersthrough, involves a murder house, a fax machine, communications between the living and the dead, and a mountain lake that moves from place to place. He is also the author of the novels The Night Swimmers, SPELLS, Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, as well as a story collection, The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared and been anthologized widely, and his books published in various countries and languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Alex Award, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a Professor in the English Department of Reed College. Leave No Trace, the film adaptation of My Abandonment, directed by Debra Granik, premiered at Sundance and Cannes and was released to critical acclaim in 2018. His eleventh work of fiction, Passersthrough, will be published in early 2022.

Reviews

[Lorrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the weirdest of Rock's books. It was a strange love story. Charlotte, a searching, Mormom girl, who was loved/worshipped/obsessed over, by a 70 year old man who dealt cards in a casino. Charlotte knew Johnson quietly followed her, kept a watch out for her, and even spied on her,but she tolerated his sick infatuation. She took up with Johnson's son, but didn't have a physical relationship with him. Instead they traveled together. The Mormom links, the trailer park theme, the desert with Joshua trees, snakes, beat up cars, and heat are all Rock's favorite themes. "This is the Place", the title of the book, is also supposedly a saying on the top of the Mormom temple as well as an old Las Vegas attraction sign. One sign luring you into the temptations of evil and the other luring you into the religious arena. Both signs are facing each other from a distance. This was an odd book that I would not recommend to my friends unless they enjoy Rock.

[Darren Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange, dark, unique, and, yet, oddly familiar. While it says it is about love, I saw it as more about good and evil and the tango those two engage in throughout existence, possibly seasoned with various types of love. At times I really enjoyed the way Rock constructed segments, at other times I just didn’t feel it. Not for all tastes, but not wishing I had not read it. I’ll check out other stuff by him because of this one.

[Lars · Rating 2 out of 5]

Super confusing and hallucinatory account of an old blackjack dealer obsessed with a young girl... it was too weird and dark for me.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rock's work is esoteric, and his plot progressions are unconventional at best. But this, his first novel, is a terribly beautiful tale of obsession that manifests from love, reminiscent of Nabokov's 'Lolita'. In addition, anyone that has lived around Utah will love the minute details put in that really bring it to life. A delight for those not deterred by unusual writing style.

"The dispute between Will and Brigham is not for me to settle, nor would I want it settled. The words hang over the salt flats, the most forsaken stretch of earth, a terrifying expanse of sheer space, white, like another planet, hard and smooth where nothing can live. This all sounds so grim! I've known joy and I'll know it again. It's just that it takes work to get up the words to talk about love."

A work evidently influenced by McCarthy and Abbey. But damn it's good.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked it up used at Green Apple for a dollar to see what Pete Rock's stuff is really like. And actually, I liked it a lot for a while. The descriptions of the desert, the slow fleshing out of the characters are soothing and unsettling at the same time, and that's freaking hard to pull off. But he never ties it all together in the end. I'd read his stuff again.

[Nate Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got 69 pages in and gave up. I read My Abandonment and really like it so I looked up his other books. This one was not good, it's about an old man that lives by himself and is obsesed with a younger woman. The story didn't seem to be going anywhere. I will try his other books and give him a chance.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good book. I liked the writing style a lot. The end was just a little disconnected. I understand the style, but I was hoping for something a little more solid. An answer instead of more questions.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was jammed into my mailbox tonight. Thanks paperbackswap.com.