Tom Drury’s richly observant tale of the American midwest centres on policeman Dan Norman, photographer’s assistant Louise Darling and her husband, well-lubricated waster Charles “Tiny” Darling. Tiny leaves town after a bar room brawl, separates from Louise and heads for Colorado in search of a new life and another woman. Dan and Louise begin an unshowy but sweet romance, and Dan campaigns in the local sheriff elections. In another kind of fiction this would be the jump-off point: Dan’s small-town wisdom would be set against foul adversaries, or Tiny might return with a gang at his back. But Drury’s reissued 1994 novel hunkers deep into the daily life of its fictional backwater of Grouse County, offering people and stories that are strange, sometimes sad and often very funny. Drury builds a low-key portrait packed with incidental detail, as well as drinking, insomnia, theft, council meetings, bad TV, aggressive fish and crackly radio stations. Conversations come in fits and starts, and the story moves at a lovely gait that feels barely perceptible but takes you to wonderful places, and spins a fine narrative from the apparent mundanity of lives being lived.
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