The Wolf
Pit
Farrar,
Straus, & Giroux 2001
Harcourt/Harvest
Books paperback, 2003
ISBN:
0156027143
photo credit:
Winner
of the Michael Shaara Award
Short
list for The Southern Book Award
Reviews:
“The
novel’s many dramatic and traumatic events will keep the reader breathless,
while the haunting, lyrical language and the fierce intelligence behind it
remind us we are reading a writer and storyteller of the first order.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Now, Youmans, who was reared in the
“Indeed, the diverse accomplishments of The Wolf Pit, especially the 19th-century
cadence of its quietly rich language, hurdle this seemingly born storyteller to
the forefront of promising young Southern writers.”
--Bob
Summer, “Novel of Civil War soldier and slave transcends genre,”
“The
Wolf Pit is an intelligent, lovely, gracefully written novel that packs a
dramatic punch. A Civil War-era tale, it resonates with atmosphere and
characterization and a virtuosic diversity of male and female voices. It
is an outstanding and ambitious novel that shows us a writer of surpassing
talent.”
--William W. Starr, “A tale of Civil War magnificently told,”
The State (
“Youmans
makes her language sing. She is as adept at capturing the horror and
carnage of war as the quiet and solemn beauty of the
--Greg Langley, “More than the sum of its parts,”
The
“Marly Youmans’ third novel is a
literary treasure.”
--
“Youmans,
quite a storyteller, writes in densely textured, somber prose befitting the
horrors her protagonists endure.”
--Deborah Kalb, The
“Ms.
Youmans writes beautifully and the tone of voice she takes on for the
characters feels very authentic, as does the compelling but harrowing
atmosphere she creates of the final days of the Civil War.”
--Catherine Downing, The
“Marly
Youmans’s The Wolf Pit is a brilliant, evocative, and masterful novel of
the American Civil War . . . Her achievement is remarkable. Youmans
deserves wide praise for her stunningly beautiful language and for telling a
story of the war that tries to recover its uneven course, its penetrating loss,
and the murkiness of its redemptive possibilities.”
--William G. Thomas III, Civil War Book Review
Comments
by writers:
“Ms. Youmans is an inspiration
to every writer who must compete with himself. I had thought Catherwood
unsurpassable, but Ms. Youmans has done it. Her characters are real; they
live and move in the stream of Time as if they had passed only yesterday.
Her lyricism breaks my heart and fills me with envy and delight. No other
writer I know of can bring the past to us so musically, so truly, as Marly
Youmans.”
--Howard
Bahr
“In the
persons of two engaging young people, a
--Elizabeth
Spencer
“There is an atmosphere, a
palpable sense of time and place, about The Wolf Pit which grips the
reader fervently. With her extraordinary sense of language, Marly Youmans
proves herself an artist of the first order in this Civil War novel
characterized by passionate action, poetic intensity, insights, and fierce
intelligence. A haunting, memorable novel.”
--Lee
Smith
“Beautifully crafted and rich in
historical detail, The Wolf Pit is a stunning novel, mesmerizing from
beginning to end. Marly Youmans is a wonderful writer.”
--Jill
McCorkle
“The Wolf Pit is a fever
dream of a book, a lamentation by a mutilated slave girl and a star-crossed
Confederate soldier. Marly Youmans’s lyrical touch puts her in the first
rank of contemporary American novelists.”
--Curtis
Wilke
News
page: http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/