Sallowsfield: A Novel
By Cliff Hudder
Literary Fiction / Humor / Saga / Texas / Yorkshire
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Pages: 390
Publication Date: October 21, 2024
SYNOPSIS
Wyatt W. Sallow, MBA—poet, business ethics professor, and coach of the 8th ranked collegiate chess team in East Texas—travels to the heart of northern England to trace his family origins in mundane Sallowsfield, only to find his supposed ancestry a mirage. He does have a real past, however: one that stalks him across the green hillsides in echoes of his catastrophic marriage, the lingering shadow of a lost child, and—there, in person, inexplicably emerging from the town’s faux-Victorian train station—“X,” the enigmatic object of his unrequited passion and a figure as perplexing as an algebraic variable.
On his eight-day tour/pilgrimage/mock epic journey, Wyatt pursues the specter of his lost love and crosses paths with the citizens of this down-at-its-heels market town as they struggle to grasp the all-consuming obsessions, ghosts, and X-factors that confound their days.
Thought-provoking yet dryly humorous, Sallowsfield weaves diverse elements into a story both light-hearted and philosophical, exploring along the way universal human touchstones of obsession, ruined love, and the inexplicable mysteries that shape our lives.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
His fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review and other journals and his work has received the Barthelme and Michener Awards, the Peden Prize, and the Short Story Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His novella, Splinterville, won the 2007 Texas Review Fiction Award, and his novel, Pretty Enough for You, was named a Top Ten Texas Favorite by Lone Star Literary Life in 2015. In 2017 Cliff was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
I give Sallowsfield a Lone Star rating of ✯✯✯✯ stars.
REVIEW
Sallowsfield is a story that follows a poet on a journey that pairs humor with broken relationships to make an intriguing and enjoyable read. This isn't the type of book that I usually pick up, but I was more than happy to give it a chance. It's always fun to push the boundaries on my typical reading and find new authors to enjoy.
The characterizatio
BROKEN CODE
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