Synopses & Reviews
When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.
As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder at a remote campsite with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd recover his memory and, together, they find a strength unique to survivors of terrible tragedies. But Rudd, desperate to protect Lyndi and unable to let the past be still, tries to manipulate their Mormon wedding ceremony to trick the priests (and God) by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim in the one hundred-year-old murder. The nightmare has just begun . . .
Review
There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.”
George SaundersI have recommended [The Open Curtain] to more people than any other book. I hope that means many of my friends have read it, or will. Have you read it? You should read it. Its something else, seriously.”Gabriel Blackwell, Shelf Awareness
Review
There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.”
George SaundersThe Open Curtain rearranged what I thought novels were capable of, what I thought I wanted from endings, and reading the rest of Evensons body of work offered similarly disorienting and entrancing experiences.” The Believer, 5x5: Brian Evenson”
"No matter what book of Evenson's we're talking about, a reader might indeed feel like something had been inflicted upon him, after spending time inside Evenson's books, which are so frequently violent and disorienting, destablizing norms of behavior just as they destabilize identity, place, and memory."Believer Logger
I have recommended [The Open Curtain] to more people than any other book. I hope that means many of my friends have read it, or will. Have you read it? You should read it. Its something else, seriously.”Gabriel Blackwell, Shelf Awareness
Synopsis
A taut literary thriller investigating the contemporary aftermath of Mormonism's closeted and violent past.
About the Author
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain (Coffee House) which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award and was among Time Out New York's top books of 2006. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown Universitys Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection) and The Brotherhood of Mutilation. He has translated work by Chrstian Gailly, Jean FrEmon and Jacques Jouet. He has received an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship. A novel, Last Days, and a new collection of stories, Fugue State, are forthcoming in 2009.