Northline (P.S.) - Tapa blanda

"A heart-rocking novel.a raw tale of America's underclass.the cool clarity of Vlautin's simple prose, perfectly listened to dialogue and unsentimental realism hold reader gloom at bay.All around Vlautin is beoming one of America's most fundamental artists in words and music." -- Mojo (UK), FOUR STARS

"Honest, compassionate.Vlautin is mining a lost seam of American writing that celebrates the dispossessed, beginning with Caldwell and Steinbeck, continuing with Algren and Fante. These are the great writers who stand behind his fiction, just as Hank Williams and Bruce Springsteen stand behind the music of Richmond Fontaine." -- Independent, UK

"Heartfelt, despairing novel.The musicality is not an accident: the novel comes with a low-key alt country CD, a perfect accompaniment to the quietly hopeless, never-ending horror of poor America." -- Financial Times, UK

"The brilliant Northline.recalls the grim beauty of something like Denis Johnson's Angels or Jesus' Son-a heartbreaking trip, in other words, into the acculmulation of woe passes for the lives of sad unfortunate people for whom the world is a daily battle ground." -- Uncut (UK), FIVE STARS

"Vlautin is the real deal and this-this-is the dog's bollocks, ladies and gentlemen.The most beautiful and satisfying book of 2008.If you like your pages to drip and bleed a beautiful agony the likes of which we haven't seen since Bukowski karked it probably then this is for you-in spades!" -- BookMunch.co.uk

"A compassionate look at everyday, ordinary people struggling to make a new life for themselves in America ... Comes complete with its own soundtrack of elegiac, rootsy music by the author."--Herald, UK

"Halfway between a Sam Shepard play and a Willie Nelson song, the language is spare, simple and beautifully hewn, and if there's only a flicker of redemption, it shines all the brighter in the gloom."--Hot Press, UK

"Sparse and brutal, but ultimately redemptive, this is compelling stuff.--Big Issue Scotland

"Northline recalls a dust-jacket blurb on an early edition of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men: 'Two hours to read, 20 years to forget.'"--Booklist

"Vlautin is the real deal and this-this--is the dog's bollocks, ladies and gentlemen...The most beautiful and satisfying book of 2008...If you like your pages to drip and bleed a beautiful agony the likes of which we haven't seen since Bukowski karked it probably then this is for you--in spades!"--BookMunch.co.uk

Fleeing Las Vegas and her abusive boyfriend, Allison Johnson moves to Reno, intent on making a new life for herself, but haunted by the mistakes of her past, she finds solace in imaginary conversations with her hero, Paul Newman, and a new life begins to emerge from the pain of her past, in a novel accompanied by a CD soundtrack with performances by the author and Paul Brainard. Original. 30,000 first printing.