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Joy, PA
A darkly insightful evocation of the post-industrial era, Joy, PA tells the story of a family teetering on the precipice of ruin. The Augenbaughs live in a broken and decaying town where the last vestiges of country-club wealth run up against the terrible realities of working-class poverty. Abigail, a fervent believer in the apocalyptic teachings of a radio preacher, is desperate to save her son from Judgment Day as she readies herself for the Rapture-due to arrive in just a few days. Her husband, Burns, has moved to the basement to live out his days in a medicated stupor, unable to cope with memories of his service in Iraq. Caught between the suffering of his mother and father, ten-year-old Willie fights the inherited demons that have savaged his parents' tenuous grasp on reality.
The somber drama surrounding the Augenbaughs plays out with a piercing and commanding lyrical beauty. Both transfixing and disconcerting, Steven Sherrill's empathetic portrait of alienation elicits hope and sympathy amidst shattered but no-less-dignified lives.
The somber drama surrounding the Augenbaughs plays out with a piercing and commanding lyrical beauty. Both transfixing and disconcerting, Steven Sherrill's empathetic portrait of alienation elicits hope and sympathy amidst shattered but no-less-dignified lives.
281 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 16, 2015
3 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Steven Sherrill
12 books122 followersSteven Sherrill has been making trouble with words since 8th grade, when he was suspended from school for two weeks for a story he wrote. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade, ricocheted around for years, eventually earning a Welding Diploma from Mitchell Community College, which circuitously to an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Now, Steven is an Associate Professor of English and Integrative Arts at Penn State University, Altoona, where he teaches, paints, and captains the Allegheny Bilge Rats Shanty Choir. He has three novels and a book of poems in the world. He has written several articles on contemporary artists for Modern Painters and for TATE Magazine. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction in 2002. His first novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, is translated into 8 languages and was recently released as an audio book by Neil Gaiman Productions. His second novel, Visits From the Drowned Girl, published by Random House (and nominated by them for the Pulitzer Prize), US and Canongate, UK was released in June of 2004. The Locktender's House, novel #3, was released by Random House in Spring 2008. And in November 2010, CW Books released the poetry collection, Ersatz Anatomy. Most recently, Louisiana State University Press: Yellow Shoe Fiction Series has accepted the novel JOY, PA for publication in the spring of 2015.
There are other books in the works, paintings always underway, much musical silliness underway, and seventeen ukuleles in the house, and 750 vintage wooden crutches in his basement.
Now, Steven is an Associate Professor of English and Integrative Arts at Penn State University, Altoona, where he teaches, paints, and captains the Allegheny Bilge Rats Shanty Choir. He has three novels and a book of poems in the world. He has written several articles on contemporary artists for Modern Painters and for TATE Magazine. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction in 2002. His first novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, is translated into 8 languages and was recently released as an audio book by Neil Gaiman Productions. His second novel, Visits From the Drowned Girl, published by Random House (and nominated by them for the Pulitzer Prize), US and Canongate, UK was released in June of 2004. The Locktender's House, novel #3, was released by Random House in Spring 2008. And in November 2010, CW Books released the poetry collection, Ersatz Anatomy. Most recently, Louisiana State University Press: Yellow Shoe Fiction Series has accepted the novel JOY, PA for publication in the spring of 2015.
There are other books in the works, paintings always underway, much musical silliness underway, and seventeen ukuleles in the house, and 750 vintage wooden crutches in his basement.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 22, 2016
It has to be said that this is a dark work, and a depressing read. Despite being a two-grimace novel, it is very well composed. I would expect it to be well written, as Sherrill is the author of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, which I count as a recent classic.
Some of the stylistic choices irritated me.
There are three main points of view in the novel, plus one minor one which appears to be the insane thoughts in the head of the boy character. There is a PTSD ex-military (laundry unit) father, whose sections are told in second person. There is the mother, whose sections are told in third person, with some flashes of omniscient narrator allowing longer and more literary sentences in those parts. There is their son, whose sections are told in first person singular. The fourth POV is in first person plural. Despite the grammatical approach, the father's and son's thoughts tend to come in very short sentences, with lots of repetition and lots of immediate contradiction. Like father, like son, is, I assume, the point.
While I see some uses of the differing grammatical persons, it mostly felt like a stunt: the author having decided to write in four persons, and sticking to it however little real purpose it has. Since the sections are often as short as half a page before there's a switch, the swapping of voice is constant, and it got repetitive and wearing. So did the repeated thoughts, and the relentless cascade of short sentences. "I watch. I wait. I bleed a little, for him. Daddy swings. The Dark One. He hits the balls. Some go high." (You get the picture.)
None of the three characters is very intelligent, and one of the things I really liked about this story is that various authority figures talk to our characters, and our characters aren't really listening. They don't follow the conversation, they drift, they can't keep up. Miscomprehension is so much of human conversation, and yet it is almost absent from fictional representations of life; except for maybe One Big Error. In this book the characters really aren't following much at all, except for the wife being focused on the Voice on the Radio who says that the Rapture is coming this week. And even there, she's not getting important details.
All three of the characters are so dysfunctional as to be insane, and that works for the tragedy, but against the believability of the novel. We can see, from the uncontrolled thoughts, that things are going to smash up badly. Or we're pretty sure, anyway. But the problem with describing a character who is both clueless and insane is that the reader's grasp on their motivation is at risk. By the last third of the book I didn't believe in any of the three characters; didn't believe that they would do all of what they are doing; and thus was largely disengaged by the time I reached the end of the book. There are brilliant scenes, some of them excruciating, but they're linked together with a lot of masking tape, a lot of tell it to the Marines.
Some of the stylistic choices irritated me.
There are three main points of view in the novel, plus one minor one which appears to be the insane thoughts in the head of the boy character. There is a PTSD ex-military (laundry unit) father, whose sections are told in second person. There is the mother, whose sections are told in third person, with some flashes of omniscient narrator allowing longer and more literary sentences in those parts. There is their son, whose sections are told in first person singular. The fourth POV is in first person plural. Despite the grammatical approach, the father's and son's thoughts tend to come in very short sentences, with lots of repetition and lots of immediate contradiction. Like father, like son, is, I assume, the point.
While I see some uses of the differing grammatical persons, it mostly felt like a stunt: the author having decided to write in four persons, and sticking to it however little real purpose it has. Since the sections are often as short as half a page before there's a switch, the swapping of voice is constant, and it got repetitive and wearing. So did the repeated thoughts, and the relentless cascade of short sentences. "I watch. I wait. I bleed a little, for him. Daddy swings. The Dark One. He hits the balls. Some go high." (You get the picture.)
None of the three characters is very intelligent, and one of the things I really liked about this story is that various authority figures talk to our characters, and our characters aren't really listening. They don't follow the conversation, they drift, they can't keep up. Miscomprehension is so much of human conversation, and yet it is almost absent from fictional representations of life; except for maybe One Big Error. In this book the characters really aren't following much at all, except for the wife being focused on the Voice on the Radio who says that the Rapture is coming this week. And even there, she's not getting important details.
All three of the characters are so dysfunctional as to be insane, and that works for the tragedy, but against the believability of the novel. We can see, from the uncontrolled thoughts, that things are going to smash up badly. Or we're pretty sure, anyway. But the problem with describing a character who is both clueless and insane is that the reader's grasp on their motivation is at risk. By the last third of the book I didn't believe in any of the three characters; didn't believe that they would do all of what they are doing; and thus was largely disengaged by the time I reached the end of the book. There are brilliant scenes, some of them excruciating, but they're linked together with a lot of masking tape, a lot of tell it to the Marines.
June 19, 2016
Full review available on Your Impossible Voice.
September 7, 2015
This fractured, postmodern, ironically-named narrative, captures the tragedies--small scale and large scale, but entirely human--of the early 21st Century in an America that doesn't care for its veterans or its children, and where the hope of a rapture that doesn't come can only lead to despair. In prose that ventures on the poetic, Sherrill has brought us a vision of our time that isn't pretty.
May 7, 2016
Great writing (as always) but not sure I enjoyed it as much as his others. If you're going to read any of this work then you need to be prepared for dark themes...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews