What do you think?
Rate this book
White Van
“Gorgeously brutal, jaggedly mattering, Meg Tuite’s incantations crackle with the clarities of a true visionary. White Van treats the trample and grime of trauma withcleansing ecstasies of language. This book will turn you inside out.”
—Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted
“I’m convinced nobody on earth writes with quite the same level of passion, verve, candor, dark humor, electric intensity, and heart as Meg Tuite. I’ve pronounced this collection my favorite of her works (and I have a bunch of them). Why? It’s the experience of reading it. You read the first sentence. Stop. Read it again. Shake your head. Read it out loud. Marvel. Feel. Look out the window. Read the whole tiny piece (a poem? a story? you’ve long since stopped categorizing these stunning mash-ups). You gasp, you sigh. You read more. You start to gobble these. You mark ones to go back to. Realize you’ve marked them all. A master, a maestro, Tuite is the kind of writer who can balance a jetliner-sized story on the tender tip of a blade of grass and not you or I or anyone else has a clue how she does it.”
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Collected Works
“The poems in White Van grind and seethe, they crawl from the backseat of the van down the block. With a withering tension, Tuite circles the globe of abuse, trauma, and memory, repurposing abduction as an inquiry into the psychosexual damage inflicted bodily upon young women. This is a hammer-hard voice, decisive in its ability to smash together the tragic and the familiar, the familial and the societal, the languages of both predator and survivor. A raw and urgent collection, steady in its honesty, as present in its performance as a siren.”
–Colin Pope, author of Why I Didn’t Go To Your Funeral
“Estranged bowels, ghost bones, mirrors, blades—White Van boldly confronts womanhood, the body, our insecurities and oppressors. Meg Tuite’s words will trap you in this winding, suffocating yet cathartic ride. It cuts right to the heart and is impossible to look away.”
—Lucy Zhang, author of Hollowed
“ White Van is in Tuite’s terms a ‘predarectomy’—the removal of the predator. The book follows the ‘endless line of girls’ who have ‘stepped here before. She never realized how easy it was to disappear.’ We climb inside the white van and come face to face with the serial killer rapist—his family—his victims and the writer who is able to create conflict, action, and resolution in each scene. A story must parade in this order across the well-eaten page. This is exactly what Tuite does—each chapter is its own seamless chilling narrative—and we are there with the speaker riding inside the white van, a witness to evil. ‘Blood on paper is a bad joke,’ but this collection of fiction and poetry is both remarkable and disturbing. White Van is a book you can’t put down, a book you will forever remember.”
—Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of The Deepest Part of Dark
“Tuite’s White Van is a work of startling lucidity. She captures the myriad frightening, familiar figures who stalk lunch counters and verge on small town edges in masterful language. This is an elbow to the mouth, a merciless howl in the face of a world given up on the Disney version of fairytales. Tuite’s characters persist in the reveries of the loner. She knows her beat, this appalling world of solitary pathos. It is a starkly eruptive world of words beyond death, beyond decay.”
—Clementine E Burnley, speaker and writer
—Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted
“I’m convinced nobody on earth writes with quite the same level of passion, verve, candor, dark humor, electric intensity, and heart as Meg Tuite. I’ve pronounced this collection my favorite of her works (and I have a bunch of them). Why? It’s the experience of reading it. You read the first sentence. Stop. Read it again. Shake your head. Read it out loud. Marvel. Feel. Look out the window. Read the whole tiny piece (a poem? a story? you’ve long since stopped categorizing these stunning mash-ups). You gasp, you sigh. You read more. You start to gobble these. You mark ones to go back to. Realize you’ve marked them all. A master, a maestro, Tuite is the kind of writer who can balance a jetliner-sized story on the tender tip of a blade of grass and not you or I or anyone else has a clue how she does it.”
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Collected Works
“The poems in White Van grind and seethe, they crawl from the backseat of the van down the block. With a withering tension, Tuite circles the globe of abuse, trauma, and memory, repurposing abduction as an inquiry into the psychosexual damage inflicted bodily upon young women. This is a hammer-hard voice, decisive in its ability to smash together the tragic and the familiar, the familial and the societal, the languages of both predator and survivor. A raw and urgent collection, steady in its honesty, as present in its performance as a siren.”
–Colin Pope, author of Why I Didn’t Go To Your Funeral
“Estranged bowels, ghost bones, mirrors, blades—White Van boldly confronts womanhood, the body, our insecurities and oppressors. Meg Tuite’s words will trap you in this winding, suffocating yet cathartic ride. It cuts right to the heart and is impossible to look away.”
—Lucy Zhang, author of Hollowed
“ White Van is in Tuite’s terms a ‘predarectomy’—the removal of the predator. The book follows the ‘endless line of girls’ who have ‘stepped here before. She never realized how easy it was to disappear.’ We climb inside the white van and come face to face with the serial killer rapist—his family—his victims and the writer who is able to create conflict, action, and resolution in each scene. A story must parade in this order across the well-eaten page. This is exactly what Tuite does—each chapter is its own seamless chilling narrative—and we are there with the speaker riding inside the white van, a witness to evil. ‘Blood on paper is a bad joke,’ but this collection of fiction and poetry is both remarkable and disturbing. White Van is a book you can’t put down, a book you will forever remember.”
—Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of The Deepest Part of Dark
“Tuite’s White Van is a work of startling lucidity. She captures the myriad frightening, familiar figures who stalk lunch counters and verge on small town edges in masterful language. This is an elbow to the mouth, a merciless howl in the face of a world given up on the Disney version of fairytales. Tuite’s characters persist in the reveries of the loner. She knows her beat, this appalling world of solitary pathos. It is a starkly eruptive world of words beyond death, beyond decay.”
—Clementine E Burnley, speaker and writer
Paperback
First published March 1, 2022
2 people are currently reading
1868 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 2, 2022
I was very honored to blurb this phenomenal collection. Highly recommended. Here's what I wrote:
“I’m convinced nobody on earth writes with quite the same level of passion, verve, candor, dark humor, electric intensity, and heart as Meg Tuite. I’ve pronounced this collection my favorite of her works (and I have a bunch of them). Why? It’s the experience of reading it. You read the first sentence. Stop. Read it again. Shake your head. Read it out loud. Marvel. Feel. Look out the window. Read the whole tiny piece (a poem? a story? you’ve long since stopped categorizing these stunning mash-ups). Whisper: damn. You gasp, you sigh. You read more. You start to gobble these. You mark ones to go back to. Realize you’ve marked them all. A master, a maestro, Tuite is the kind of writer who can balance a jetliner-sized story on the tender tip of a blade of grass and not you or I or anyone else has a clue how she does it.”
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
“I’m convinced nobody on earth writes with quite the same level of passion, verve, candor, dark humor, electric intensity, and heart as Meg Tuite. I’ve pronounced this collection my favorite of her works (and I have a bunch of them). Why? It’s the experience of reading it. You read the first sentence. Stop. Read it again. Shake your head. Read it out loud. Marvel. Feel. Look out the window. Read the whole tiny piece (a poem? a story? you’ve long since stopped categorizing these stunning mash-ups). Whisper: damn. You gasp, you sigh. You read more. You start to gobble these. You mark ones to go back to. Realize you’ve marked them all. A master, a maestro, Tuite is the kind of writer who can balance a jetliner-sized story on the tender tip of a blade of grass and not you or I or anyone else has a clue how she does it.”
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
May 5, 2022
Innocence is executed within these flash stories.
We are all but one ride away from being a victim.
We are all but one ride away from being a victim.
May 23, 2022
White Van is an everywhere disappearance. A sharp, precise, unutterable mystery. Girl after girl after girl thrust into the immeasurable trauma of a life- death balance, moving at too young an age. Ever pass a white van on a long, strange highway or on a dirty back road and wonder what is inside? Tuite not only tells you, she shows these terse, fraught spaces like no other author dare to. These flash stories spilled forth, echoed in brilliant, electric poetic prose are masterful, suspenseful, and evocative.
April 9, 2022
a blend of poetry and fucked up fiction. the White Van weaves down the streets of you and you shiver because you find out what's behind the blacked out windows.
June 5, 2022
I'm ashamed that this is the first book by Meg Tuite that I've read, as White Van is just the kind of writing I love. These stories, poems, daggers, and organs are pitch dark and stylistically worded, rendering depravity into something beautiful.
March 30, 2022
You won't be able to put down this down. You won't even be able to identify the genre. You'll be turning pages with urgency, trying to evade the white van, trying to find the white van.
If you don't know Meg Tuite's work, get started.
If you don't know Meg Tuite's work, get started.
April 1, 2022
“White Van is in Tuite’s terms a ‘predarectomy’—the removal of the predator. The book follows the ‘endless line of girls’ who have ‘stepped here before. She never realized how easy it was to disappear.’ We climb inside the white van and come face to face with terror: the serial killer rapist— his family—his victims and the writer who is able to create conflict, action, and resolution in each scene. A story must
parade in this order across the well-eaten page. This is exactly what Tuite does—each chapter is its own seamless chilling narrative—and we are there with the speaker riding inside the white van, a witness to evil. ‘Blood on paper is a bad joke,’ but this collection of fiction and poetry is both remarkable and disturbing. White Van is a book you can’t put down, a book you will forever remember.”
—Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of The Deepest Part of Dark
parade in this order across the well-eaten page. This is exactly what Tuite does—each chapter is its own seamless chilling narrative—and we are there with the speaker riding inside the white van, a witness to evil. ‘Blood on paper is a bad joke,’ but this collection of fiction and poetry is both remarkable and disturbing. White Van is a book you can’t put down, a book you will forever remember.”
—Anne Elezabeth Pluto, author of The Deepest Part of Dark
May 18, 2022
Wow is all I can say.
Non conformist writing and a surprise in every line.
It’s a mixture of poetry, prose, and fiction with deep, disturbing secrets at its core.
It’s beautifully written and I couldn’t get enough.
Non conformist writing and a surprise in every line.
It’s a mixture of poetry, prose, and fiction with deep, disturbing secrets at its core.
It’s beautifully written and I couldn’t get enough.
July 7, 2022
In Meg Tuite’s WHITE VAN, the volcano is truly active. Seismic shifts shake the ground under the reader’s feet before the lava is flung from a hundred open wounds in the earth, raining down choking ash in a gritty pall. White vans and their drivers’ take and take and take, stealing innocence, hope, desire, shattering dreams and naivety, leaving hundreds of glinting shards for the reader to shift carefully through under an oppressive sun. Tuite performs eviscerating feats, my favorite a type of surgery: the “predarectomies: removal of the predator.” Ascension for the prey. “There’s so much to remove.”
April 1, 2022
Adding a page to see if this might be something you like:
Squeezed in by Despair
The sky absorbs itself into tiny clusters of strangely beaked branches cutting incisions through the veined hiss of tired blue. Step on to the cackle of leaves beneath your shoes. Wallow your way in and out of trees, skeletal tall, old as aches, and smell darkness bleed into each pore. No sense in pretending what the forest hides. Bodies compost history, groan and gnash dust into rich, brazen dirt damp with the guts of wanderers. A multitude of eyes size up the stench of your leeched family tragedies. The caverns of sad, lonely trails deepen across your face. It’s okay. You’ll never find yourself alone. A pack of swaying columns covered with bark imperceptibly surround you.
Squeezed in by Despair
The sky absorbs itself into tiny clusters of strangely beaked branches cutting incisions through the veined hiss of tired blue. Step on to the cackle of leaves beneath your shoes. Wallow your way in and out of trees, skeletal tall, old as aches, and smell darkness bleed into each pore. No sense in pretending what the forest hides. Bodies compost history, groan and gnash dust into rich, brazen dirt damp with the guts of wanderers. A multitude of eyes size up the stench of your leeched family tragedies. The caverns of sad, lonely trails deepen across your face. It’s okay. You’ll never find yourself alone. A pack of swaying columns covered with bark imperceptibly surround you.
May 19, 2022
"There is a calendar in every room, but no sense of keeping track." Enter the world of WHITE VAN and ditch convention at the door. Here is a place where rules don't apply, (where you can check out any time you want but you can never leave), where time is both endless and the tip of a pen, where language reigns supreme. Meg Tuite wields sentences like a sword. Every verb is a hari-kari. These are eviscerating and visceral stories, forceful and haunting stories, unforgettable every last one of them.
April 6, 2022
I had the privilege of reading an advance copy and writing a blurb for "White Van":
Estranged bowels, ghost bones, mirrors, blades—White Van boldly confronts womanhood, the body, our insecurities and oppressors. Meg Tuite’s words will trap you in this winding, suffocating yet cathartic ride. It cuts right to the heart and is impossible to look away.
Estranged bowels, ghost bones, mirrors, blades—White Van boldly confronts womanhood, the body, our insecurities and oppressors. Meg Tuite’s words will trap you in this winding, suffocating yet cathartic ride. It cuts right to the heart and is impossible to look away.
April 3, 2022
This dark curio is mind blowingly good. Read it!
May 11, 2022
I loved this book! Gorgeous and stunning. Haunting and gritty, just the way I like. Meg Tuite is a powerful writer with a voice all her own.
May 23, 2022
White Van, Meg Tuite
Having devoured every one of Meg Tuite’s prior masterpieces, it thrilled me to get her latest collection, White Van, yet I was also somewhat worried that she might be unable to keep her astonishing streak alive.
Turns out, I was foolish to even ponder such a thought.
White Van is many things—bedazzling, eloquent, crippling in parts, mysterious, riveting, wholly relevant and topical, not to mention emotionally unflinching.
Reading Tuite’s latest book is a little like bathing in a tub that’s too small, where escape seems easy enough, but each porcelain side is incredibly slippery, not to mention crafty. It’s also like being in a tub where the water temperature is many degrees hotter than you’re used to, yet the extra heat turns out to be just the very thing you needed to remind you that you’re still alive and breathing.
In White Van, Tuite takes on the role of patron saint for abused and/or missing young women, and she does so fiercely, unapologetically, and with unabashed honesty. Never mind that the subject matter is gritty; Tuite handles the material so deftly that it feels as if each tale is indispensable. She writes with sword, dagger and shiv. Though fictitious, Tuite’s authenticity makes it seem like the events taking place are pages ripped from her own life, as if the traumas she describes are her own brutal own scars, laid bare for anyone to see.
It’s a brave and masterful undertaking. Every page is replete with lush, unique, and visionary vernacular such as these brief excerpts, which would make any lover of language gawk and swoon:
I reside in a house full of holes.
A bruise the size of bankruptcy whips the map of childhood from her ass to the back of her knee…
Squandered tomorrows stunt into rotted yesterdays.
Nothing carries on without the lick of droning confusion.
Organs pump leaks through your chitchat. Language becomes malignant with pastel nausea.
Sometimes in the morning I can lie so still that nobody remembers me.
In the hands of anyone else, subjects so intense and raw would naturally get botched, portrayed entirely maudlin and melodramatic or else rendered soulless, but under Tuite’s adroit hand, each haunting spell comes alive in dizzying fashion. It’s truly something to behold.
Unvarnished is an overused word to describe a writer who takes the veil off of their writing, but in White Van, Tuite goes much further and peels the skin off. She’s unafraid of showing you the horror, and the repercussions of that terror. In fact, her willingness to do so is the very thing that makes this book so indelible, so ruthlessly and beautifully frank, a classic for our times and all that follow.
May 29, 2022
Intensely poetic, this one goes deep and never comes back up for air. Hold your breath and you either make it or you don’t.
April 26, 2022
A wild, genre-bending ride that unsettles and astounds. Meg Tuite's writing is utterly distinctive.
December 3, 2022
Not for the faint of heart, Meg's book is a velvet-worded manic descent into an intimate fever dream of human darkness, a relentless and linguistically synesthetic onslaught which in its compost heap of pain, suffering, evil, lust, torture, abuse, mundanity, violence, violation, victimization, and the behaviorally grotesque yet implicitly--by omission, or perhaps negation--burns a tiny flickering amber candleflame of hope for compassion as though a small girl in boots and backpack waiting patiently on the corner for a bus that may never come.
*Disclosure: I have studied with the author at two writers workshops.
*Disclosure: I have studied with the author at two writers workshops.
December 16, 2022
More thoughts to come on this but: In this collection of nebulous, disquieting stories and vignettes, Meg Tuite somehow deftly captures the bleak reality surrounding every woman and girl. White Van recalls the missing girls of our teen hood, the sickening lurch of our stomachs of every encounter in darkened streets. Tuite writes searing prose with the meticulous attention to language of a poet. For those with a morbid fascination for serial killers and long mythic figures of lost and taken women, this collection will absolutely scratch that itch.
September 2, 2022
Meg's use of language in her latest collection, "White Van," is beyond stunning. It took me forever to complete reading it because I kept stopping to remark 'how does she do that?' A triumph of prose!
May 18, 2023
This tiny book - like the best tiny books - takes a long time to read as she reimagines the familiar ways we have of referencing family and cultural taboo. Tuite gives language to the unspeakable. Let her words blanket over you. You may find strange comfort here.
October 15, 2022
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway. Meg Tuite’s collection is a series of poetic prose entries; some of the sections seem straight micro-fiction, while others appear more like poems. What draws each one together is the brutal energy of a world of serial killers, kidnappers, suicides, and loners. The symbol of the harrowing white van is very strong in order to make the reader aware of the danger and predation that moves around us. My favorite piece is called “Where the Street Meets the Body” because it connects the reader and the street unflinchingly and leads to uncomfortable, harsh truths of addiction and dislocation. Overall, the book contains a series of related though not necessarily interconnected character vignettes that are part of the unspoken horror of our times.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews