The Town. Unnamed, set in the Australian outback. Practically abandoned, desolate, with streets that follow no logic. A young writer researching the ‘middle-of-nowhere’, those depressing towns that die on the vine.
Here he finds something beyond mere economic downfall. Australian ghost-towns are disappearing … physically disappearing. Near epidemic in nature, and these strange holes will claim his home as well.
Now the writer is falling into the weird, so deep he may never return.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Shaun Prescott is the author of The End of Trolleys, Erica from Sales, and has been the editor for Crawlspace Magazine. Originally published in 2017, The Town is being released in hardback to a wider audience. Jonathan Letham (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude) says: “The Town moves with a gentle command amid the obvious reference points of Calvino, Kafka and Ave, but it also invokes the less-celebrated novels of Steve Erickson and Rex Warner. Like them, Prescott seeks the universal in a meticulous paraphrase of the here and now, and finds the dislocation hiding in locality to show us just how lost we really may be.” With the strange premise of towns that physically disappear, Prescott’s debut novel looks to tie social commentary with the Weird, capturing the loneliness and desperation of the lost.
From Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Town by Shaun Prescott releases 4 February 2019 and is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA