Purple America - Softcover

‘Moody is a unique stylist whose beautiful prose weaves helixes of language around the simplest of events... Without that style, Moody’s story might have become mere sentiment. With it, he conjures an altogether rare element of human feeling.’
Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times

‘Powerful and engrossing... Purple America further establishes the author as part of a gifted generation of American writers concerned with crises of masculinity and modernity.’
Paul Quinn, TLS

A tour de force – with this book, Rick Moody, in one bound, lands in the very front rank of American writers.

When a dying old woman who is losing her ability to communicate with the outside world is deserted by her husband, it is to her stuttering, alcoholic son that she must look for help.

Purple America arcs perfectly across one long, long day in New England, where, as the local nuclear plant enters meltdown, a smaller, more tragic fission is taking place in the heart of a nuclear family.