So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

Description

In a small Pacific Northwest town we meet a young man who has shot dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy: the anguish, regret, despair and bittersweet romance. Typical of Brautigan's singular style, So the Wind Won't Blow it all Away is a beautifully written, brooding novel. Its autobiographical prose is a fitting epitaph to this complex, contradictory and often misunderstood writer.

Richard Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington where he spent much of his youth, before moving to San Francisco where he became involved with other writers in the Beat Movement. During the sixties he became one of the most prolific and prominent members of the counter-cultural movement, and wrote some of his most famous novels including Trout Fishing in America, Sombrero Fallout and A Confederate General from Big Sur. He was found dead in 1984, aged 49, beside a bottle of alcohol and a .44 calibre gun. His daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, has written a biography of her father, You Can't Catch Death.

Poetic, gently eccentric and deeply poignant * * The Times * * [His] most substantial novel . . . Brautigan is especially adept at evoking the everyday magic of childhood * * Times Literary Supplement * * The verbal humour and zany charm of the book remain quite irresistible * * Daily Telegraph * * Strikingly original . . . [Brautigan] is the lone eccentric on the busy city intersection staring at the sky and finding patterns in the clouds, while everyone else shuffles along staring at the ground * * Guardian * * Brautigan gets you drunk on similes, knocks you out with exquisite turns of phrase . . . Amazing * * Uncut * *