Synopses & Reviews
"Almost too hot. It had cracked 100 the day before, and the old weatherman on channel four, the guy who Joyce had said was the most accurate but heard was a pervert, had said today would be hotter by a few degrees."
The summer heat in Tucson makes some people dry up and some people boil over. In the dusty, gated desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle), a handful of residents are finding that neighborhood life is becoming increasingly bizarre among the crumbling swimming pools, overwatered lawns, and disaffected children.
Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Thomas, her increasingly misanthropic brother, rarely leaves the house, all the while cultivating a disturbing little obsession of his own under the front porch. Down the street, Merv is stuck in a rut, thirty years old and still living at home. Lonely and looking for a way out, he's reaching his breaking point over his insomniac mother, whose oddly compulsive behavior with household appliances threatens to wreak havoc on his life.
When a strung-out, magic marker sniffing teenager disappears from the neighborhood and rumors of murder surface, these malcontents find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summer and perhaps their lives.
Funny and disturbing, Modern Ranch Living probes the emptiness of modern American culture, the strange things people do to satisfy their twin hungers for pleasure and oblivion, and the unexpected small acts of kindness they can sometimes perform to ease one another's pain. This delicately deadpan comedy makes brilliantly clear why Mark Jude Poirier was named "the young American writer to watch" by the Times Literary Supplement.
Review
"Bad vibes and sadistic fantasies are all that keep this limp story afloat." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Poirier is working in such a crowded, shallow pool that there really isn't much room for anything meaningful to happen....This is a writer of considerable talent who needs to leaven his misanthropy with a bit of real compassion for his characters." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Mr. Poirier is very good at projecting the often surreal weirdness of human motivation and behavior....His best work is yet to come, but for now Modern Ranch Living will do." Dallas Morning News
Review
"Though murder and chicanery raise their ugly heads in the second half of the book, it's difficult not to finish it feeling better about this world than you do when you first enter it." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Poirier has an understanding of and finds humor in the strange as well as a gift for characterizing the ennui and discontent that envelopes youth." Booklist
About the Author
Mark Jude Poirier grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of two short story collections, Naked Pueblo and Unsung Heroes of American Industry, and the novel Goats. He lives in New York City.