Goats

Naked Pueblo, Mark Jude Poirier's debut collection of short stories, received rave reviews at publication. The Guardian's Julie Burchill confessed to finding it "shatteringly brilliant." But while many found "his absolutely maximalist, throw-everything-in-and-shake-it-up short story collection" (Esquire) "speedy, witty, degenerate, wicked, and hugely entertaining" (Madison Smartt Bell), the odd critic praised it less enthusiastically. Kirkus Reviews opined, "One hopes Poirier's enrollment in the Girl-With-Green-Hair school of fiction will expire and free him to explore the emotional candor that is his strength."

Poirier has since hushed any dissenters with this funny, poignant, and emotionally resonant first novel, Goats. In fluid, almost languid, prose Poirier tells the story of fourteen-year-old Ellis, whose home life in Tucson, Arizona involves his carefree mother, Wendy, and Goat Man. Goat Man lives in the pool house, cleaning the pool, gardening, and getting stoned as often as possible, his small goat herd housed at the back of Wendy's property. In a subversion of the coming-of-age formula, Ellis moves away from his eccentric mother and the eternally adolescent Goat Man to a preppy boarding school, discovering a whole new "normal" world out there. There are small victories and disappointments for both Ellis and Goat Man as their lives are traced in parallel until they meet again during spring break on a desert trek to Mexico and discover just who they have become in the meantime. Goats makes up in originality and heart what it lacks in cliché. Wise, unpretentious, and subtle, Poirier is a mature writer who has definitely graduated from Girls-With-Green-Hair. His success is well assured. Georgie, Powells.com

"When the hero of this first novel, a 14-year-old straight-A stoner from Tucson, goes east to a fancy prep school, he leaves behind not only his infantile New Age mother but also his surrogate father, a handyman who tends the flatulent bovid ruminants of the title." The New York Times Book Review, Summer Reading 2001 selection