This was a quirky little find. The New Books shelf in the library was a bit depleted last Friday so I ventured a little further into the main fiction shelves and picked this up after spotting the word 'Pulitzer' on the cover.
The book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 but it didn't win because nobody won. No prize was awarded for fiction that year because no book received a majority of the votes from the board members. The board was under no obligation to give a reason for this, so they didn't. Some things in life must remain a mystery.
It's a novella rather than a full novel, but by the end it feels greater than the sum of it's 116 pages. Set in the American West in the early twentieth century, at a time when a man looking for employment could find work as a logger or bridge builder, and leave at the end of the summer season with enough money in his pocket to buy a bit of land for himself and his family. In the book, that man is Robert Grainier who is just an ordinary man trying to make the best of what he has available to him.
There is a distinctly American tone to the writing and the accounts of hard manual work are sprinkled with examples of superstitious belief that is often fueled by the 'wisdom' of Kootenai Bob, an Indian man living in the community.
On the back cover the writer Rupert Thomson describes the book as 'concise', 'muscular' and 'moving', and I think he is probably right.
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