Wells Tower is an American short story writer who is born Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada on 14^th April 1973 and grew up in Chapel hills, North Carolina. He splits his time between Chapel Hills, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York. He has been quietly writing his short stories and publishing them over a past decade in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Vice, Harper’s Magazine, A Public Space, Fence and other periodicals.

 

Credit Jimmy Fountain

 

In 2009, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Tower’s first short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. While reviewing this book, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, wrote that the book “decisively establishes” Mr. Tower “as a writer of uncommon talent” and drew comparisons to Sam Shepard’s social radar, Frederic Barthelme’s ear and David Foster Wallace’s eye. While Edmond White of The New York Times Book Review describes Tower’s writing style as, “His syntax, though always easy to follow, is supple enough to wrap itself around several shades of meaning in the same sentence. His understanding of previously under-recognized feelings is rich in detail and passionate in utterance. And his familiarity with the whole ghastly world of malls and “cute” commercial culture is serious, even plangent, certainly not merely satirical.”

The blurb of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned says “In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily try to reassemble themselves. His version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. Combining electric prose with savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a major debut, announcing a voice we have not heard before.” With such strong praise and recommending, it is hard for me to ignore this book. This is the reason why I am including this book in my this A2Z short story TBR list.

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You can grab your copy from following links,

Hardcover

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (17 March 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374292191
ISBN-13: 978-0374292195

Paperback

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Picador; First edition (2 February 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312429290
ISBN-13: 978-0312429294

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