'Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude'

Postcards Paperback

Postcards

Annie Proulx

This is story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible that it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman.

The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home – not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences…

‘Postcards’ was Annie Proulx’s first novel, which received huge acclaim and marked the launch of an outstanding literary career. Her works include short story collections ‘Bad Dirt’, ‘Close Range’ (featuring ‘Brokeback Mountain’) and novels such as ‘The Shipping News’ and ‘Accordion Crimes’.

Reviews of Postcards

    • ‘Proulx has come close to writing “the great American novel”.’ New York Times
    • ‘The richness of America is portrayed with memorable effect in this remarkable first novel – Faulkner springs to mind. “Postcards” is written from the heart and – for its raspy dialogue, laconic humour and beautiful description of the natural world – deserves to be widely read.’ Independent on Sunday
    • ‘A sweeping and dramatic tale. Not since Steinbeck has the migrant worker’s life been so evocatively rendered.’ Daily Telegraph
    • ‘A remarkable novel; poetic and yet driven by a strong narrative, tragic and yet scored with deep veins of humour. Loyal Blood is one of those rare, haunted characters who continue to live in the mind after you finish the book.’ Literary Review

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