Indiana, Indiana

By Laird Hunt

Book Overview

In the center of the county in the center of Indiana in the heart of the country, and down a long, dark hallway, Noah Summers, a simple man who has led a far from simple life, sits before a roaring fire, drifting in and out of sleep. On this dark and lovely winter night, he will sift through the shards of his memories, trying to make sense of a lifetime of psychic visions and his family's tumultuous history on an Indiana farmstead.

As a young man, Noah, a true innocent, fell deeply in love with Opal, a young woman with a penchant for flames. Once married, the couple move into their own house on his family's farm. After forty-two idyllic days, Opal is overcome by her fascination with fire and institutionalized. Though Noah embarks on a journey to save her, he cannot, and must instead rely on her letters, his memories, and the strength of his family to sustain him.

Written in a masterful elegiac style that echoes Faulkner and Steinbeck, Indiana, Indiana is a compellingly beautiful and surreal Midwestern saga firmly grounded in an Indiana landscape populated by farmers, drifters, sheriffs, and ministers, and overflowing with musical saws, family bibles stuffed with flowers, and appliances rusting in the fields.

As everyone who read The Impossibly knows, Laird Hunt's ability to create a sense of otherworldliness is astonishing. Indiana, Indiana resonates for miles.--Amy Fusselman, author of The Pharmacist's Mat

Laird Hunt, former United Nations press officer and -current faculty member at Naropa University, has lived in Singapore, Tokyo, London, Paris, The Hague, and on a farm in Indiana. He is the author of the novel The Impossibly, and his writing has appeared both here and abroad in many publications, including Grand Street, Fence, Conjunctions, Ploughshares, and Zoum Zoum. He and his wife, poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566891442
• ISBN13: 9781566891448
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a small masterpiece

INDIANA, INDIANA is simply a gorgeous novel. The writing is spare yet lyrical. There are a few Faulknerian moments, but by and large Hunt achieves grace through juxtaposition and empathy rather than through syntactical complexity. There is no confusion, beyond the opening pages, about what is happening, or to whom; a critical plot point--the fate of Noah's wife--is revealed slowly, but the broad outlines are clear from the start.The mystery, if it be mystery, is a man's relationship with land, with loneliness, and above all with time.This is the book that William Maxwell or Wendell Berry would have written had either been a surrealist. The only other contemporary American novel I can think to compare it with is Gene Wolfe's underappreciated PEACE.

Very much like Faulkner

When I began reading this book, my first though was "This is Faulkner." The book has a very sad feel to it--one that radiates from the pages. You can feel the cold from the Indiana winter plains, the pain from loss, yet every so often, you notice you have a smile on your face at the recollections of the past. A quick read, it is worth checking out.