Whiteout Conditions

by Tariq Shah

"The condition of Whiteout Conditions is the North American sublime, a grim, gnomic, hilarious dialect Tariq Shah inherits from Denis Johnson, Don DeLillo, the Coen Brothers, The Jesus Lizard, and Colson Whitehead. —Jess Row, author of Your Face in Mine and White Flights
Ant is back in Chicago for a funeral, and he typically enjoys funerals. Since most of his family has passed away, he finds himself attracted to their endearing qualities: the hyperbolic language, the stoner altar boy, seeing friends in suits for the first time. That is, until the tragic death of Ray — Ant’s childhood friend, Vince's teenage cousin. Ray was the younger third-wheel that Ant and Vince were stuck babysitting while in high school, and his sudden death makes national news.

In the depths of a brutal Midwest winter, Ant rides with Vince through the falling snow to Ray’s funeral, an event that has been accruing a sense of consequence. With a poet’s sensibility, Shah navigates the murky responsibilities of adulthood, grief, toxic masculinity, and the tragedy of revenge in this haunting Midwestern noir.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Race, Novels

81 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 17, 2020

About the author

Tariq Shah is the author of Whiteout Conditions (Two Dollar Radio, 2020). A Best of the Net award nominee, some of his recent work appears in Joyland Magazine, Prelude, Whiskey Tit, Diagram, jubilat, Heavy Feather Review, and New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims Anthology edited by Kazim Ali (Red Hen Press, Nov 2021). A former peace corps volunteer in Mozambique, Tariq was born in Illinois and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was like a stinging slap to the face. I mean that as a compliment. It’s about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’s younger cousin, and that’s all you need to know, because this isn’t a story, it’s a feeling, or a string of them: the aching nostalgia of walking streets you used to know well and now find changed; the numb pleasure-pain of tracing over memories of good times long gone; the sick excitement of violence anticipated. There’s not a scrap of fat on Shah’s prose – it’s as bare and unforgiving as the bleak Midwestern urban sprawl its characters traverse. Ant says he wants to emerge from the funeral ‘core-shook and sparkling, death-ecstatic, fully diamond-hearted’, and that’s how I emerged from the book, shuddering and cold like someone on a comedown. Again, a compliment. To be read in one sitting.

I received an advance review copy of Whiteout Conditions from the publisher, Dead Ink.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heart-breaking road trip in the midst of a tragedy that hits the characters harder than they want to let on. Shah’s unique writing style gives the reader brief glimpses of the character’s past and present with this unknown tragedy looming over them the whole time, these glimpses are almost as hypnotic as watching windscreen wipers on the slow setting, with each sweep the story moves on.

Our narrator is Ant and something feels off about him right from the start, he has this weird obsession with funerals…he almost craves them… He is collected at the airport by Vince and they embark on the journey to a funeral of a childhood friend whose violent death has hit the national headlines. There is a tension between Ant and Vince which keeps threatening to boil over into violence and it is this tension that keeps you on edge, wondering what has gone down between these two and has you guessing at what has happened to their childhood friend.

This is a tale about grief and how we cope with loss, Ant has to deal with a lot and the book’s fantastic ending feels so surreal, playing out in a way you could never have guessed.

This is the sort of book I enjoy reading, having no idea where it is going to take you. One of the biggest arguments for giving indie publishers a go because the big guys ain’t gonna take a risk on putting something this beautiful out in the world.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...

[Beth Mowbray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few 5 star new releases I have read so far this year! If you are looking to support a new book that has a pub day falling amidst all of the turmoil happening right now, this is one you don’t want to overlook!

Whiteout Conditions is a brief whisper of a novel at just over 100 pages and Shah doesn’t waste a word. The story follows Ant as he returns to his hometown of Chicago for the funeral of a childhood friend. Another old friend, Vince, picks him up from the airport and their journey to the funeral is a dark, haunting, and at times humorous exploration of death’s impact on our lives. Shah weaves in themes of coming of age, coming to terms with being an adult, loss and grief, and much more as this tale quietly grinds to a gut-wrenching and unexpected conclusion.

Thank you to Two Dollar Radio for gifting me this advance copy!

[Alex Yurcaba · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much of what’s great about this book is what is left off the page. This is such an exquisite distillation of the uniquely bleak midwestern ennui. The inability of each character to just spit out their feelings and engage each other speak volumes more than what’s allowed in the relatively sparse prose.

In this book I saw generations of men in my family from Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, each as inacapable of getting anything off of their chest as their father. What’s left in place of that erstwhile communication is a palpable sense of anger, frustration, and utter frigid loneliness.

The focus of this quick novel wanders a little more than I’d like, and it ultimately comes at the expense of developing some of the central characters. But volumes are spoken about them by the words that aren’t capable of bubbling up into the text. I would hugely recommend this book to fans of “Fargo,” and anyone generally interested in the literature of the American middle west.

[Chris Vola · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Some men,” Michael Caine’s character in the film The Dark Knight points out while discussing the Joker’s motives, “just like to watch the world burn.” Other less psychotically motivated voyeurs, like Ant, the scarred, wisecracking protagonist of Tariq Shah’s rousing debut novel Whiteout Conditions, prefer to crash funerals.

Picking up this perverse, yet “kind of fun” hobby after burying the last of his loved ones, Ant absorbs the sad and sometimes unintentionally hilarious antics of the bereaved in order to deflect the pain of his own past. And over the years, he’s gotten pretty good at it, “handling death like a snake charmer…wholly impervious to fang and safe from its venom.” Until a shocking tragedy in his Midwestern hometown sends him headlong on a jarring collision with the people and places he’s spent most of his adult life trying to forget. Possessing a deft ear for the viciousness of masculine friendship and an unflinchingly detailed eye for the post-industrial, decaying blur of “frozen sludge and rail” suburban squalidness, while injecting heavy, almost sublime significance (often with a much-needed dollop of dark humor) into the quietest moments, Shah has crafted an ominous meditation on loss, grief, faulty coping mechanisms, and revenge. One that might hit a little to close to home for those who view home as something to run from, but who always find themselves inexorably dragged back.

Chock full of family secrets, problematic tribalism, memorable characters named Bat Neck and Ray Gun, violently jocular boors, and a dog named Bullets, and written in a pulsating, descriptive, yet down-and-dirty blue collar prose, Whiteout Conditions is the most pleasurable kind of slow burn. That is, until the book’s surprising final act, when it takes a wild, yet totally not unforeseen turn into something far more visceral and sinister. And at a too-brisk 110 pages (my only real criticism with the book is that I want to spend much more time with the characters), this one is hard not to rip through – like that first morning cigarette on a monochromatic highway morning – in one satisfying sitting.

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm, I've been sitting on this review for a few days, because I considered re-reading Whiteout Conditions. I felt like I'd missed some key passage or element, but after skimming a few other reviews, it seems like I didn't.

There's a lot going on under the surface here, which can be great, but Shah gives us *too* little. I don't know why everyone has this animosity toward Ant, or why he and Vince's relationship is so strained. The book jacket says that Ray's death makes national news, but I didn't see that manifest anywhere. As a reader, my feet were never firmly on the ground in this novel.

I enjoyed the slippery navigations between interior and exterior. I liked that Ant is a deeply feeling person, and the weight in him is palpable. Whiteout Conditions had the rawness I've come to admire in Two Dollar Radio books.

[Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's really good. Like, sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting good. Tariq Shah's first novel is an experience I'm glad I got to have.

The two main characters just keep pushing against each other, and no one can get anywhere (I enjoyed counting the number of times they are in a car, but not moving). Who gives way, who acts, and how they resolve were really well handled and felt very honest.

This is almost a novella, but 115 pages is the perfect length. One of the blurbs on the back compares to Denis Johnson and I like that comparison.

[Cari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unexpectedly sad. Unexpectedly violent (toward the end, anyway). This story finds Ant on a road trip with his old friend Vince to attend a funeral. We don’t learn much about either character’s background but enough to know they both tend to have self-destructive personalities and apparently some resentment toward each other. The writing is beautiful but the story is painful as it examines how our past shapes our lives and how truly difficult it is to leave any of it behind.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one. I understand the Denis Johnson comparisons. It has a restlessness vibe to it. I liked spending time with these characters. Wouldn't have minded spending even more time with them.

[daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

quarantine book #2-- if you're not reading two dollar radio books, are you even in quarantine?

[emily]

‘Because I outlived everyone I love, and now there is nothing left except this one last raw, shredded nerve that is singing through me now, singing a pain I thought was lost to me but is here and now and singing right through me. I feel it. It’s all I feel, I am alive with it. It’s all right now. So I hold on, and I let it sing, and despite the fact it cannot change anything—Bullets gives me a paw, drapes it over my forearm—We make a little pact, a covenant, just between us strays. We shake on it.’

Frankly, I don't know how I feel about this one. Or rather (maybe) it just didn't hit hard enough (for me)?

[Vinay Khosla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and lyrical. There’s movement within staying still after all…

[Chels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and poetic, this is a story about never being able to go back to how things were.

[Ari Robin McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

WRITING CRAFT: 3 - This is Tariq's debut novel, and I found myself wading into his dense, upbeat style, intrigued in part because of the mystery which underscores it. Scatterbrained, thoughts hopscotching around, and yet somehow driven, main character "Ant" exudes aspects of the philosophy in László Krasznahorkai's notable work, "The Animal Inside." He flees effortlessly and almost reflexively from his own errors, having gingerly fled death and its resulting desolation for long enough that the way he moves through time evokes his namesake. Ant is a unique but systemized being responding to a murky call to return to a place he once was.
Tariq occasionally leaves phrases dangling that interrupt the impressiveness of this building mystique. Didactic moments such as, "a nickname lends personality to its bearer," or, "bruises are a badge," though attributable to Ant, didn't settle right, even as on-the-go maxims.
EMOTIONAL HEFT: 3 - This story's inciting action revolves around the funeral of a ninth grader nicknamed "Raygun" who is brutally killed by a pervert neighbor's pitbull. The horror for the reader in accompanying Ant and his ex-brother Vince (whose mom, Evelyn, took Ant in at one point) towards the funeral of someone who was like a brother to both, is palpable. Meanwhile, the tragic Ant also stumbles through his own memories of his many deceased relations, and towards an amassing of folk he used to know.
However, it's Vince's plans at vengeance which become the climax, but before this eventual propulsion of the novel, the meat of the book is spent slow-sliding towards a cutting board of a place where something as horrible as this could have happened.
And when we get there, we see how the horror is normalized, how the dead teen is blamed dismissively by peers for being weak, how everyone drowns their horror in pills, and late-teens seem to rule the roost.
The toxicity is complete. Tariq's portrait of it: sanctified. The emotional register: potent, yet dulled with all of it.
MESSAGE DEPTH: 3 - The key moment of the book for me is when Ant is exposed to one, non-toxic space for just a heartbreaking minute or two. As a reader you almost can't believe he's stumbled into this fictional womb, and I caught myself holding my breath. He's upstairs with the queen ants, Raygun's mom and Evelyn, the only potential nurturers across a frozen emotional tundra--themselves waiting for painkillers from Vince--and Ant says the exact wrong thing. It's a powerful moment where you realize how thoroughly the narrator's empathy has been warped, and as a reader it feels like it happens right out from under you, while also hinting at the disorienting finale to come.
PERSONAL RESONANCE: 3 - I admit to being initially stumped by the meaning of this book. I flirted with the idea that Tariq was some sort of misguided animal rights' activist, but then the resonance of certain, critical scenes lead me to believe that the dog Bullet's role begins a commentary on how a person's upbringing will manifest itself in ways outside of their own control. So while it should be a dog's owner that is blamed for something like what happens to Raygun, people also are products of their (broken) environments and the (broken) systems which shape these environments. I'm going to go with the latter, and look forward to reading Tariq's next book, which will presumably take-up some of what's bubbling beneath the surface of "Whiteout Conditions."

(all out of 5)

criteria explained: https://medium.com/@A.R.McKenna/a-boo...

[Micah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. It tells a sad and ragged story that takes place in the very Midwest winter. The story did a good job evoking the feelings of driving somewhere you don't wanna go (old friends funeral), being back where you grew up and, like i said, that old classic Midwest winter feeling.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Damn, this is such a hard book to rate. I was absolutely loving this, certain it was going to be 5 stars, until the last 17 pages.

Shah's writing is impeccable. It's sharp and incisive. As much as Ant, the narrator, professes to love funerals, you can tell something is off. We gradually learn that everyone he loves has died--his mother, he's estranged from his father, his ex-girlfriend who he once thought he would marry, and now his childhood best friend's younger cousin.

This is the kind of novel people describe as 'gritty.' It's harsh, it's hard to read, and it's hard to look away, too. There are some really beautiful lines in here that made me stop and go "oooooooh."

I've come to appreciate content warnings for books more as I've gotten older. I recently read a Talia Hibbert book where in an author's note at the start, she says something like, "This book depicts parental abandonment and OCD, I've done my best to represent them with care, please be mindful of these themes as a reader going into this book." Bam. Easy. That's all you have to do! No spoilers.

In the final 17 pages of the book, a dog is brutally, violently tortured and nearly killed. It's quite graphic and was so gruesome I could barely go on. I pushed through to find out if the dog lives. Unclear at the end, but the last paragraph was a beautiful bit of writing. Would've liked a warning about the dog torture (might have skipped the book honestly). I wonder if the book could've had the same impact without it... the beautiful ending was hard to appreciate after reading the dog torture.

[Ashley Person · Rating 4 out of 5]

"he was just one of those things people bury as well as they can. because that works for a while. one day though, as you're going about your business, you end up tripping on a tiny little itty-bitty rock in the ground, the rock turns out to be bone, and you can't help it- you start digging"

everything leads back to the place you're from. you will always find your way back home, but time won't wait for you.

mind-numbing read. claustrophobic. gruesome. detached. rotten. cold. ghostly.

"'that was some fog, wasn't it?' I said to the old woman at the desk, as i waited on the elevator.

'i think it's still there,' she replied, engrossed in her word search. '

you just can't see it.'"

[Cal Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mix of grief and humor with visceral images that left me wanting more. The author does also a good job of describing chicago, it made me think about my time living there. I also enjoyed the male friendships and seeing how the main character processes his grief over time. Highly recommend this short novel!

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grimy, morbid nostalgia that ends up in a brutal… well maybe it’s a rescue?

[Vincent Perrone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Survivors grief. Childhood friends trapped on a blustery car ride, upping the ante with sharper ribbings and deeper reveals. A vicious dog ripe with pathos.

A top contender in the growing microgenre: Post-recession midwestern malaise fiction. Full of sparking moments that sway on the pendulum of kindness and cruelty, the scales always tipping.

[Seven S · Rating 4 out of 5]

made me tear up a bit. bizarre and funny

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn this was good

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried.

[Noel Welsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grim, downright punishing at times. Even at 115 pages, the book weighs heavy. Phenomenal Arby’s content though.

[Cady Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

a roadtrip that goes nowhere… bleak noir that I wouldn’t normally go for but really fascinating when you consider the racial projects of this post-race world

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was hard to read but I think it's one of those books that could be taught in a high school literature class. Written well -- even though it was dark and intense and depressing, I couldn't put it down for very long

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slim and interesting, though I feel like I wanted more information about everything. It all went by so fast.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow.
A book at once a perfect sibling to Krans, Palanhuik, and Nersesian and also an elegy for life in semi-urban poverty. This book shook up a beer bottle of Hold Steady Lyrics and opened it against my temple sending me into my darkest corners and holding me hostage there with lyric and insight.
Balancing somewhere between confessional and sociological study, Whiteout Conditions is an exceptional novel in which the scab will get picked off before it is ready and, at all costs, the truth will come out.
Buzzfeed's review of this book is quoted on the cover, "MEMORABLE." When I saw that prior to reading Whiteout Conditions I laughed, like, what a vague review, but the reality is there isn't much else to say.
Tariq Shah writes a narrator that manages to be a semi-emotionless everyman--a Tyler Durden with self-awareness--in Ant who confesses in the beginning to enjoying funerals, describes them in a way that is both lurid and saccharine and I say that as someone who has lost a lot of people, been to a lot of funerals. The book itself, of course, is a funeral, an elegy. I think anyone who has left a home that tortured them will identify with Ant's experience going home. I think anyone who has had one more funeral to attend, back breaking under this final precious straw, will experience a near-constant state of *there but for the grace of god go I* while reading this book.
Immaculate, sparse, self-aware, and gritty, Shah has created something viscous and something holy.

It has been a long time since I have had such a visceral response to a book.

I want to talk about the formal aspects of Whiteout Conditions. I want to talk about the word play, the repetition of "variations on theme," the imagery. But I am overwhelmed by the experience. Have you been snowed in in Hell? Have you clung desperately to survival? After Whiteout Conditions, you will have.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t love this, other than the IL setting and I think it was a Trib recommendation...it is so internally the narrator’s story that I couldn’t connect and there are a few parts I wish I could unread about the poor dog Bullets. The last paragraph of the book is the most glorious, so that says something too. Ant (Antioch) is heading home to the Chicago area for a funeral - which he loves and recounts why in copious details for the first few pages...his buddy Vince picks him up at O’Hare. How old he is, how he’s related to the deceased, Ray a HS freshman, why he left the area, why he’s back, where he lives now - all hazy details that Ant knows but chooses not to share with the reader which creates the disconnect...even the trip from airport to the funeral is hazy in part because of a drug and alcohol stupor for Ant and Vince but also because the logistics and landscape are hazy - it wouldn’t require an overnight in a motel to get from the airport to the WI border. This becomes a needless odyssey in which Ant and Vince reminisce, spar with each other, get high and have car trouble and deal with winter weather. When they arrive at the funeral, Ant seems to be persona-non-grata, but unclear why. Seems like a tight family and neighborhood but doesn’t fit the hinterlands setting. Ray was killed by a pit bull and there is desire for vengeance but this is the last 10 pages of the book, so seems more incidental than the point of the book. Trib review says the book “explores toxic masculinity, revenge, tragedy and other forces that obscure a life’s path.” Yep, but only in a way that makes sense to those within the story. No lessons learned here. Or there for that matter.

[Cindy Cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could see how some readers would be drawn to this book. The author used a lyric style, which I often admire, but it often became overwritten and off-putting. His overuse of similes and metaphor became almost comic at times as nearly each sentence compared each and every action to something else: "the cold is so cold its like an awl in your ear" or our smiles fade as "fast as rain-drenched sidewalk chalk." In some sections, I longed for a straight up sentence.

The toxic masculinity wasn't explored in a way that became interesting or new to me--much of it was cliched or touched on too quickly (do men really still say they were distracted by "babes" walking by? Do they randomly punch each other in the face and then laugh or sprinkle each other with gasoline?).

I think he also romanticized the visiting of funerals and wakes--it never made me feel what he wanted me to feel for the main character (and who cannot think of Harold from Harold and Maude). I never liked any character--which is not vital for a good book--but I couldn't find a true way "in." The twist at the end made little sense to me. The POV switched randomly without much seeming purpose.

I say all of these things, but I do also see that this author thought about craft and situation and story and language. I think I would give him a chance in the future. I think this first novel is a classic first novel for a writer who will learn and grow a great deal. It reminded me a tiny bit of The Stranger if I were pressed to compare it to a book....It was also a pretty short read.