August: An extraordinary debut novel about ordinary life

August

Author: Callan Wink

ISBN-13: 978-1847088109

Publisher: Granta

Guideline Price: £14.99

“August figured that somewhere along the line cats had struck a bargain – they knew they could expect to feel a man’s boot if they came too close; in return, they kept their freedom and nothing much was expected of them.”

Callan Wink is an understated writer who doesn’t go in for obvious symbolism, choosing instead details that bring the backdrop of his fiction to life. But it is hard not to make the link between the aforementioned cats and the protagonist of Wink’s captivating debut novel.

August is a 12-year-old boy from rural Michigan whose parents are recently separated. In his former childhood home, his father has shacked up with a farmhand. On an older property on the same farm, meanwhile, his mother has become reclusive, a woman who barely eats and is prone to morbid conversation. Is it any wonder that August wants to keep to himself, a feeling that stays constant as he matures?

Wink’s coming-of-age tale follows August as he moves away from the farm with his mother to Grand Rapids in Michigan and subsequently to a small town in mountainous Montana, where his mother gets a job as a librarian. It is an elegant, considered novel that charts the joys and traumas that shape an individual. Wink eschews drama for the ordinary revelations of everyday life, but that’s not to say that nothing dramatic happens. Over the course of seven or eight years, plenty of life-defining moments occur, from vicious school fights to a starkly related incident of gang rape.

Wink is interested less in the dramas themselves than in the response of his protagonist

What it means to be a young man growing up in the heartland of America is deftly explored. Wink is interested less in the dramas themselves than in the response of his protagonist, who reacts, at various stages, heroically or poorly, or more often than not, a few moments too late – after the fact, as is often the case in life itself.

Little resolution

Those looking for a classical Hollywood structure will be disappointed. There is little build or resolution around events. The narrative progresses as time moves forward and characters come and go. They are no less memorable for it.

Wink's writing has won him much acclaim, not least from the late Irish Times literary correspondent Eileen Battersby. His stories and essays have appeared widely, including in the New Yorker. His debut collection, Dog Run Moon, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and received a Pen/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention.

As with his short stories, Wink’s affinity with the natural world is evident in his debut novel. On the banks of the Musselshell in Montana, “The rocks at the river’s edge were covered with a dried layer of silt, and the low branches of the Russian olives and alders were plastered with hardened gray muck and leaves where the water had receded following spring runoff.” The details of farm life in August’s early days in Michigan, his stint in the city and his time spent working for farmer Ancient in rural Montana are all brightly rendered.

This rich, clear prose has the rare quality of making anything seem interesting, from the mechanics of a baler machine to the backdrop of a dive bar. Wink's writing has the deceptive simplicity of greats such as Hemingway or Carver, and the melancholy and pathos underpinning the book has echoes of John Williams's Stoner, though in August we don't get as close to the character. The protagonist's detached observations and solitary ways can at times keep the reader at bay.

Major talent

It is a minor comment on a book that confirms a major talent in contemporary fiction. The characters we meet along the way, the parents in particular, are well drawn and multifaceted. August’s father offers advice to his son down the phone, in poignant conversations that show a broken connection and a desire to repair.

August's mother is a wonderful creation, a plain speaker with shades of Olive Kitteridge, though with less of a temper. She calls her son out on his apathy and reticence. She doesn't make him feel guilty but she tells him straight: "Every child exists in part to further the narrative of the parent." Other side characters, such as big talker Tim Duncan and August's employer Ancient, also come effortlessly to life.

Wink is a writer who is able to take a step back, to flip the obvious on its head

The tough physical labour required of men who work on farms is brutally evident in August. By the end of the book it has taken its toll on the protagonist, but in Wink’s broad-minded world there are always positives to be found in disaster. He is a writer who is able to take a step back, to flip the obvious on its head.

Or as August’s mother memorably notes, “What if instead of death everyone called it being born and looked forward to it as the great reward at the end of seventy or so years of slow rot on earth?”