Feast Day of the Cannibals (The American Novels) - Softcover

Praise for Feast Day of the Cannibals Foreword Reviews "Book of the Day" selection "Feast Day of the Cannibals is the first of [Lock's American Novels] to explore the lives of 19th-century men who felt a sexual attraction to each other. . . . [His] recreation of a past time and place is impressive, but his signal achievement in this novel is the voice of its narrator, Shelby Ross. . . . Lock does not merely imitate 19th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of Melville." -Gay & Lesbian Review "This spectacular work will delight and awe readers with Lock's magisterial wordsmithing." -Library Journal (starred review) "Transfixing. . . . This historically authentic novel raises potent questions about sexuality during an unsettling era in American history past and is another impressive entry in Lock's dissection of America's past." -Publishers Weekly "Lock's latest entry in his superb American Novels series again features his remarkable eye for historical detail and fine-tuned felicity with the language of the period. . . . [Feast Day of the Cannibals] will delight fans of classic American literature." -Booklist "Engrossing and elegant, Feast Day of the Cannibals captures America's kaleidoscopic spirit during a tumultuous, rapacious era." -Foreword Reviews "While Moby-Dick is often referenced by the characters, it's Billy Budd, a later work of Melville's, that's alluded to thematically, as Lock addresses questions of desire and repression, both personal and societal. . . . [Feast Day of the Cannibals] memorably provides a window into old New York and its narrator's conflicted mind." -Kirkus Reviews "A slow-burning tale of repression and sublimation, a work that tells a tale of obsession and the violence that ensues." -Vol. 1 Brooklyn "As in his previous novels, Lock both presents an engrossing storyline and a vivid sense of life in late 19th-century Manhattan." -Our Man in Boston Select Praise for the previous books in Norman Lock's The American Novels Series "Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth . . . to create something entirely new-an American fable of ideas." -Shelf Awareness "The American Novels series, Norman Lock's current multi-year, multi-volume project, is nothing short of his most ambitious endeavor yet . . . a fusion of all his preoccupations: fabulism, storytelling and the story of the telling, and the exploration of history, its discontents and malcontents." -Big Other "In each [American Novels series] volume the first-person narrator functions as a kind of refractive lens, bending and blending together a generation of texts and ideas within a single mind, and yielding a spectrum of impressions on the development of American culture and identity." -Millions On The Boy in His Winter "Brilliant. . . . The Boy in His Winter is a glorious meditation on justice, truth, loyalty, story, and the alchemical effects of love, a reminder of our capacity to be changed by the continuously evolving world 'when it strikes fire against the mind's flint,' and by profoundly moving novels like this." -NPR "[Lock] is one of the most interesting writers out there. This time, he re-imagines Huck Finn's journeys, transporting the iconic character deep into America's past-and future." -Reader's Digest "To call [The Boy in His Winter] a work of fiction is to tell only part of the story. This book is as much a treatise on memory and time and the nature of storytelling and our collective national conscience. . . . Much of it wildly funny and extremely intelligent." -Star Tribune "Lock plays profound tricks, with language-his is crystalline and underline-worthy-and with time, the perfect metaphor for which is the mighty Mississippi itself." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) On American Meteor "Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse's prophecy for life on earth at the end." -NPR "[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain's spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock's books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield." -Wall Street Journal "[American Meteor] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "American Meteor is, at its core, a spiritual treatise that forces its readers to examine their own role in history's unceasing march forward [and] casts new and lyrical light on our nation's violent past." -Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review) On The Port-Wine Stain "Lock's novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mutter] but with decadent fin de siecle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock's story as [his novel's narrator] is by Poe's. . . . Echoes of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud's theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction." -New York Times Book Review "As polished as its predecessors, The Boy in His Winter and American Meteor. . . . An enthralling and believable picture of the descent into madness, told in chillingly beautiful prose that Poe might envy." -Library Journal (starred review) "As lyrical and alluring as Poe's own original work, The Port-Wine Stain captures the magic, mystery, and madness of the great American author while weaving an eerie and original tale in homage to him." -Foreword Reviews "This chilling and layered story of obsession succeeds both as a moody period piece and as an effective and memorable homage to the works of Edgar Allan Poe." -Kirkus Reviews On A Fugitive in Walden Woods "A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau's time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. . . . This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day." -Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling "Bold and enlightening. . . . An important novel that creates a vivid social context for the masterpieces of such writers as Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne and also offers valuable insights about our current conscious and unconscious racism." -Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman "Bursts with intellectual energy, with moral urgency, and with human feeling. . . . Achieves the alchemy of good fiction through which philosophy takes on all the flaws and ennoblements of real, embodied life." -Millions "Demonstrates Lock's uncanny ability to inhabit historical figures and meticulously capture the vernacular of the time like a transcendentalist ventriloquist. . . . Offer[s] profound insights that sharpen our understanding of American history." -Booklist (starred review) On The Wreckage of Eden "Perceptive and contemplative. . . . Bring[s] the 1840-60s to life with shimmering prose." -Library Journal (starred review) "Lock deftly tells a visceral story of belief and conflict, with abundant moments of tragedy and transcendence along the way." -Kirkus Reviews "The lively passages of Emily's letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock's thought-provoking series continues to impress." -Publishers Weekly "[A] consistently excellent series. . . . Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue." -Booklist

CRITICALLY LAUDED CONNECTED NOVELS: Feast Day of the Cannibals is the sixth installment in Lock's American Novels series. Rave reviews for books in the series have appeared on NPR and in print and online outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest, and BuzzFeed, and the novels have garnered numerous starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, and Foreword Reviews. Although each novel stands alone, fans of the cycle will enjoy discovering the subtle connections between them and the way Lock pays homage to major American literary figures and genres: first with Mark Twain and the coming-of-age adventure story in The Boy in His Winter; then with Walt Whitman and the Western in American Meteor; Edgar Allan Poe and the gothic psychological thriller in The Port-Wine Stain; Henry David Thoreau and other famous transcendentalists and abolitionists in a marriage of slave narrative and pastoral drama in A Fugitive in Walden Woods; Emily Dickinson in a lyrical lament of love and innocence lost in The Wreckage of Eden; and now with Feast Day of the Cannibals, featuring Herman Melville and Washington Roebling in a dark tale of ambition and the secrets of the heart. CAST OF HISTORIC CHARACTERS: Many readers and reviewers have lauded Lock for, as Booklist put it, his "uncanny ability to inhabit historical figures and meticulously capture the vernacular of the time like a transcendentalist ventriloquist." In addition to Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, and Washington Roebling (chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge), the novel prominently features Herman Melville. Moby-Dick, Melville's classic novel that was forgotten in his own time, continues to sell thousands of copies every year, topping syllabuses and best-books lists alike. In Feast Day of the Cannibals, Lock explores themes in Melville's work and the America of his time, retracing Melville's epic sea story of enmity and resetting it in the depths of Manhattan, where the author lived and worked. Melville's enduring fans will find it fascinating to be plunged into his world as Lock skillfully conjures up the vivacious, embittered author. BIG THEMES/BIG QUESTIONS: Feast Day of the Cannibals is topical in its consideration of the persistence of American intolerance, the audacity of the nation's ambition, the crimes committed in the name of capitalism, the immense labor of its artists and builders, and the fears of a nation facing a profound turning point. Offering a view of the lower depths and inner workings of its greatest city, the novel also affirms the higher possibilities of a human being. As Lock interrogates both the darkness and tremendous achievements he discovers at our nation's heart, his tale of homophobia and economic anxiety in the Gilded Age reminds us that we are still wrestling with the same issues as we enter a new Gilded Age.