Product Description

A literary sensation published to outstanding accolades in America and around the world, Lord of the Barnyard was one of the most auspicious fiction debuts of recent years. Now available in paperback, Tristan Egolf's manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel is the story of a town's dirty laundry -- and a garbagemen's strike that lets it all hang out.

Lord of the Barnyard begins with the death of a woolly mammoth in the last Ice Age and concludes with a greased-pig chase at a funeral in the modern-day Midwest. In the interim there are two hydroelectric dam disasters, fourteen tavern brawls, one shoot-out in the hills, three cases of probable arson, a riot in the town hall, and a lone tornado, as well as appearances by a coven of Methodist crones, an encampment of Appalachian crop thieves, six renegade coal-truck operators, an outraged mob of factory rats, a dysfunctional poultry plant, and one autodidact goat-roping farm boy by the name of John Kaltenbrunner. Lord of the Barnyard is a brilliantly comic tapestry of a Middle America still populated by river rats and assembly-line poultry killers, measuring into shot glasses the fruits of years of quiet desperation on the factory floor. Unforgettable and linguistically dizzying, it goes much farther than postal.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254191 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.16" h x 5.49" w x 8.25" l, 1.06 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Amazon.com
Tristan Egolf's first novel is an unsparing view of life in a town where inbred Appalachia and Middle America overlap and intermingle. John Kaltenbrunner, an only child, is born on the heels of his father's death. At an unusually early age, the boy shows a flair for farming and a desire to be left alone, two things that make people pick on him in increasingly vicious ways. John's life plan is to drop out of school when he hits 16 and mind his own business. But he loses everything, alienates everyone, and through a series of increasingly outrageous mishaps winds up serving three years work-release felony time on a river barge. When he comes home to Baker, no one recognizes him:

John had expected, maybe even hoped for, a little something more to herald his arrival--some burning crosses or lynch mobs on the lawn, a coven of Methodists to picket his re-entry, a banner-wielding committee from the school board, anything at all. But to his disbelief, he found the streets quiet and empty.

The streets don't stay that way for long as the tale truly turns on the garbage strike organized by John and his gang of fellow misfits. As a result, Baker comes apart at the seams and all the citizenry reveal their true natures. In his singular debut, Tristan Egolf demonstrates an unschooled flair for storytelling, which earned him accolades--and even a comparison to Céline--when the novel was published in France. True, his characters are cutouts with few surprises, including dialogue (there isn't any). But there is plenty of room in these pages to admire a wild and imaginative look at a slice of life cut from the underbelly of Middle America. --Schuyler Engle

From Publishers Weekly
The growing legend surrounding the author (he was discovered by the daughter of prominent French novelist Patrick Modiano; see "Hot Deals," Aug. 24) threatens to create unusually high expectations for this bright but uneven debut novel published first in England. It's a wild ride of a book, prone to stretches of excess, but also possessed of a manic, epic energy. It begins ferociously, thrusting the reader into the aftermath of the explosive melee that has torn apart Baker, a Midwestern town besotted by ne'er-do-wells and thieving churchgoers and rotting with municipal decay. As the narrative works backward, the "notorious" John Kaltenbrunner becomes the focus of the story. Described by his peers as "the freak on the tractor, the corncrib fascist, the troglodytic goatroper from just north of the river," John is a driven, determined boy who proves capable of single-handedly reviving an entire farm by the age of nine. In dysfunctional Baker, however, John draws ire in direct proportion to his prodigious talents. Soon he's been run off his land, siphoned penniless and exiled to a floating work-camp on a blighted river. John eventually returns to Baker, only to find the town as horror-stricken as ever. After washing out of innumerable menial jobs, John finally obtains work as a garbage collector, which leads to a lengthy showdown between the "Hill Scrubs" (John and his fellow garbagemen) and the rest of the community. Soon the town is awash in garbage and John and his fellows are hunted men. Told from the point of view of one of the locals, the novel reads much like an eyewitness account made available for the public record. What drives this book at times also derails it, as Egolf's gift for depicting comic misfortune?initially entrancing?suffers from overuse. By the book's latter half the disasters have become expected, the tropes repetitive and John's growth as a character stunted. Despite this, Egolf's robust and intoxicating prose shows great promise.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this monumental debut novel, bad luck follows John Kaltenbrunner as he struggles to live quietly apart from the mediocrity in the blue-collar Midwest town of Baker, best described as a "dysfunctional bureaucratic quagmire." In a series of elaborate events, John loses his family's farm to the treacheries of a Methodist congregation. In retaliation he destroys the property and is sentenced to three years in a work release program. After doing his time he returns to Baker and organizes a strike of the town's garbage workers for the cause implied in the book's subtitle, bringing the town to its knees. The dramatic conclusion entitles this novel to join the ranks of other master-plots of the whimsical and absurd. Egolf's storytelling is compelling, and his rich palette of similes and metaphors makes this an entertaining and disturbing portrait of small-town America. Highly recommended.
-?David A. Berona, Univ. of New England, Biddleford, ME
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.