Wolf in White Van: A Novel

I'm normally more of a fantasy reader but when I heard about this book I was intrigued: a novel about a guy dealing with a trauma buy building a fantasy play-by-mail game, written by the guy from the Mountain Goats. The novel is more about personal growth and using fantasy as a mechanism. beautiful and haunting and poetic.

When someone crosses some artistic boundary, even between two related forms of storytelling, as Darnielle has done here, it's very tempting to worry they will fail, and that if they fail, that will mean something, somehow devaluing their other work. I was nervous, as I started this book, that it wouldn't be real somehow, that it would be an amateur effort.

Please let me dispel that worry, if you have it too. This is a genuine authentic work in its own right. It deserves to be read. It deserves to be lauded. It is what you want it to be and not what you fear it might have been. The subject matter is serious, so I won't tell you it's a cover-to-cover delight, but you will feel good for having read it.

From the very first page I was caught up in the tangles of thoughts, memories, reflections. Darnielle immediately places you inside the consciousness of his character and for the rest of the ride you hang on as you try to pull apart what's present, what's past, what's true, what's perspective. There is plenty of suspense as you try to untangle what happened to this person on whose thoughts you have hitched this ride. I had trouble putting it down.

As a huge Mountain Goats fan, I may be biased in writing this review since I love John Darnielle's writing style. In a way, this novel reads as a very extended Mountain Goats song...familiar themes, similar story telling techniques; which will make it a treat for Darnielle's fans. However, I think it has an even wider appeal in that it is just a different and well-written piece of fiction that moves the reader along at a rapid pace wanting to get to the bottom of the story. Great read.

I read this book for my book club. Rather bizarre. I liked the author's style of free flowing thoughts but was not really into the gaming part of the story. I am hoping to gain a better appreciation when my club meets and discusses.

A great evocation of escapism and the comforts and dangers of an over-evolved fantasy life.

Not always a pleasant ride, and non-traditional enough in its structure that there are a lot of things left unsaid or only hinted at. Discomforting and enthralling in equal measure - definitely worth a look.

This book was more then I expected, beyond what I desired and truly a unique and eerily wonderful read. I'm equally impressed & in awe with What John Darnielle has accomplished here. Keep digging, please keep digging, I feel as though you've pinched a fraction of gray matter within me that is both pleasant and haunting. Thank you.

This book was well written, but ultimately anti-climatic and bore to read. The premise was interesting. I kept expecting something exciting to happen with each page I turned. When I finished the book, my first response was "huh".

If you're a fan of John Darnielle's work, you'll have high expectations for this book. My high expectations were surpassed. It's all the language you expect, building a complex portrait of a person. I don't fully understand it yet and I'm not sure I ever will. I need to read it again. I'm going to read it again.

I just started this last night and did so just because I'm a fan of John's music. I figured if his text is nearly as good as his lyrics it'll be an easy win. This really isn't an easy read, as paragraphs take you in an out of both conscious states and dreamlike reflections. However it is a very inviting read; obviously not in a happy tale sort of way, but more in a dark, "where the hell is this going?" sort of way.

I came to this book with high hopes, as a longtime fan of Darnielle's work with The Mountain Goats. JD does not disappoint with this book. His prose is absolutely gorgeous, and the main character is one of the most intriguing figures in recent literary memory.

I came to this book with high hopes, as a longtime fan of Darnielle's work with The Mountain Goats. JD does not disappoint with this book. His prose is absolutely gorgeous, and the main character is one of the most intriguing figures in recent literary memory.

I wanted to like this book so badly, but I couldn't get past the scene in the park in which Darnielle attempted to paint a metaphorically resonant image of a man feeding ducks and conversing with a young child. All I could picture was myself being beaten over the head with said metaphorical resonance.

I adore TMG and I recognize the power of Darnielle's prose, and I believe it better suited to other art forms.

Perhaps it is personal preference, but I found this book to be not just depressing, but depressing without any redeeming qualities. The story lines that are woven within the book about the main character are never fully explained or have any closure - almost to a point of being nonsensical. The only reason I even managed to finish this was because it was for my book club, and I was on vacation in a foreign country and has nothing else to do or read.

Seems like a long drawn out story with a lot of unnecessary fillers and descriptive rants I'm assuming trying to connect the reader to the main character but it didn't work for me. Wouldn't recommend it.

This title has been on my book “radar” for some time. As someone who has explored the various aspects of gaming and loves to read, I was admittedly interested in the concept of a story that involves a text-based role-playing game. And it just so happens, it met the requirements for a challenge prompt. So I quickly worked it into the line-up this month.

The prompt: A book with an animal in the title.

The Rundown: Wolf in White Van follows the events surrounding Sean, after a disfiguring accident has left him isolated. In the wake of said events, he creates an imaginary world within a text- based role-playing game, Trace Italian. Through the development of this game which is played via the mail, Sean guides players on an adventure through an imaginary landscape. However, when two young individuals are met with unfortunate outcomes after deciding to take the game into the real world, Sean finds himself on the stand and called into question.

The Characters: Really there is only one at the center of this story, Sean. He is viable but nothing extraordinary. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of emotion he conveys as someone who has been through and is now facing another large hurdle in life. I did not dislike him, but I failed to develop any true connection with him. There was no real growth or evolution occurring. The supporting characters were limited, but this was understandable. The story is about a young man who has been shut off from the world after a terrible accident. It made sense that there were not many individuals who really stood out in the story.

Execution & Story: In terms of originality, I am offering a few bonus points here. The attempt to incorporate Trace Italian into the narration delivers something a bit different for readers. And maybe for some, will even establish the connection I failed to. However, the sequence of events felt disjointed and often interrupted. The pacing was oddly slow and the overall effect dry and monotone. A lot has and was happening for there to be so little tension or excitement. The story did not feel like it ever progressed.

Writing & Narration: I always enjoy when an author chooses to narrate their own audiobooks. I find a strange satisfaction in knowing the voice accompanying the story is the creator. It was no different in this case. But again, the pacing is painfully slow and there is never any moment of anticipation or urgency. I did not really struggle with this as audio, but cannot help but wonder how it translates on to paper. I would imagine much like someone’s rambling and vacant thoughts.

Conclusion: I was honestly pleased to put this one behind me. We just did not click. I require stories that build up a certain amount of anticipation and have more direction. I want to be driven to a conclusion. I found Wolf in White Van is more of just an existing series with no powerful moments, but I am sure there is an audience willing to embrace it.

Wolf in White Van tells the story of Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been horribly disfigured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the end result of a failed suicide attempt. Alternating between different moments in Sean's life, he describes peoples' reactions to his appearance and his encounters with others both before and after the shooting. Having recovered from his injury, the isolated and pain-addled Sean earns a small income through his very own play-by-mail role-playing game called Trace Italian. The snail-mail game ultimately becomes his own secluded realm, a place of solace in which he shares with faceless strangers—two of whom take the fictive world to fatal extremes.

The writing is nothing short of spellbinding. Debut author John Darnielle, who hails from Bloomington (IN) and is the singer-songwriter for the Mountain Goats, writes in lengthy, lyrical sentences, a rather stream-of-unconsciousness style not unlike his music. What's especially enthralling is how the fractured narrative mirrors Sean’s splintered personality. Interestingly, his retro RPG serves as a deflection of his deep-seated guilt even as Sean finds himself potentially culpable for his adolescent fans’ perverse misinterpretations of said game. Darnielle’s novel is reflective of how heavy-metal music, horror films, violent video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and other artistic outlets have been cited for their presumed roles in suicides and mass murders.

I’m quite partial to the story’s open-ended conclusion, though admittedly I really wanted to know what the fates held in store for Sean. The novel's failure to espouse a final answer of his complicity actually works to its effectiveness. Readers will have many questions after they've finished the last page, but our inability to discern Sean's future is as frustratingly elusive and the possibilities of knowing our own ending. Don’t get me wrong, this book is genuine and deserves to be read. The writing alone makes it a worthwhile undertaking. The evocative parallels one draws between life and Trace Italian are compelling. With its infinite choices and labyrinthine storylines, life is not unlike a role-playing game; a meticulous choose-your-own-adventure in which the possibility of Death lurks around every corner—and Death will always prevail in the end.

Despite its grave subject matter, Wolf in White Van is a beguiling story from cover to cover. Vivid and profound, Darnielle's novel is one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Laced with authenticity and peppered with thought-provoking metaphors and colorful language—and let’s not forget, the lengthy exegesis of 80s cult film, Krull (a favorite from my childhood)—this striking mediation on the puissance of escapism is an absolute must-read.

Wolf in White Van tells the story of Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been horribly disfigured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the end result of a failed suicide attempt. Alternating between different moments in Sean's life, he describes peoples' reactions to his appearance and his encounters with others both before and after the shooting. Having recovered from his injury, the isolated and pain-addled Sean earns a small income through his very own play-by-mail role-playing game called Trace Italian. The snail-mail game ultimately becomes his own secluded realm, a place of solace in which he shares with faceless strangers—two of whom take the fictive world to fatal extremes.

The writing is nothing short of spellbinding. Debut author John Darnielle, who hails from Bloomington (IN) and is the singer-songwriter for the Mountain Goats, writes in lengthy, lyrical sentences, a rather stream-of-unconsciousness style not unlike his music. What's especially enthralling is how the fractured narrative mirrors Sean’s splintered personality. Interestingly, his retro RPG serves as a deflection of his deep-seated guilt even as Sean finds himself potentially culpable for his adolescent fans’ perverse misinterpretations of said game. Darnielle’s novel is reflective of how heavy-metal music, horror films, violent video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and other artistic outlets have been cited for their presumed roles in suicides and mass murders.

I’m quite partial to the story’s open-ended conclusion, though admittedly I really wanted to know what the fates held in store for Sean. The novel's failure to espouse a final answer of his complicity actually works to its effectiveness. Readers will have many questions after they've finished the last page, but our inability to discern Sean's future is as frustratingly elusive and the possibilities of knowing our own ending. Don’t get me wrong, this book is genuine and deserves to be read. The writing alone makes it a worthwhile undertaking. The evocative parallels one draws between life and Trace Italian are compelling. With its infinite choices and labyrinthine storylines, life is not unlike a role-playing game; a meticulous choose-your-own-adventure in which the possibility of Death lurks around every corner—and Death will always prevail in the end.

Despite its grave subject matter, Wolf in White Van is a beguiling story from cover to cover. Vivid and profound, Darnielle's novel is one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Laced with authenticity and peppered with thought-provoking metaphors and colorful language—and let’s not forget, the lengthy exegesis of 80s cult film, Krull (a favorite from my childhood)—this striking mediation on the puissance of escapism is an absolute must-read.

I know I’m a little old to say that a rock band changed my life, but The Mountain Goats did. The first time I heard “This Year” on The Mountain Goats thousandth album (No, they haven’t recorded a thousand albums, but damn they’re prolific) The Sunset Tree, something just clicked and I proceeded to listen to the song and the entire album for close to a year. I, of course, listened to The Mountain Goats whole catalog, and loved it. John Darnielle writes about the losers you went to high school with—who really weren’t losers at all (The song, “The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton” is an excellent example of this kind of song), you just didn’t take the time to get to know them—the pain of growing older and being slightly disappointed with life, of loneliness, and the simple joys of being alive.

Darnielle’s debut novel, Wolf In White Van, resonates with the same verve, energy, and semi-darkness that The Mountain Goats bring to the table, and it might be that Darnielle may actually be a better novelist than he is a songwriter. (Yeah, I know, he’s written hundreds of songs, and only one novel, so the statement is a bit of a stretch)

Wolf In White Van is the story of Sean, a former high school “loser” (aka a jean jacket wearing heavy metal kid that is featured in more than a few Mountain Goats songs), who is horribly disfigured and spends his days in his generic apartment with very little personal stimuli other than visits from an at home nurse and a by mail post-apocalyptic role-playing game he created while recovering from the accident—it’s really more of an incident—which left him disfigured in the hospital called Trace Italian. (The game is also how Sean makes his meager living)

Sean’s life is extremely lonely and dejected. Along with the isolation he feels because of his disfigurement, he also feels rejected by just about everyone in his life, including his parents (Probably one of the most single powerful and telling paragraphs in the novel is when after Sean’s grandmother dies, his parents ask him not to attend the funeral because of his appearance) and former friends. Even the complex imaginary world of Trace Italian has been tainted when we learn that two of the games players decide to go live-action with the game and end up freezing to death, and Sean is now being sued for their deaths by the players families.

Despite the grievous events that have shaped Sean, I never saw him as a tragic character. I instead viewed him as an every man, who like most of us is perfectly fine with simply rolling along with his existence and living his stripped down life and running Trace Italian. Would he want his life to be different? Of course, but like most of us, he’s made missteps that he simply can’t take back.

For those readers who are looking for a novel that contains big reveals and stunning, life changing revelations which re-shape the protagonist’s world view, you should probably steer clear of Wolf In White Van. Sean does not change, he does not become a better person as his story ruminatively unwinds. (The only change Sean experiences is considering reconstructive surgery at his at-home nurse’s suggestion) However, if you enjoy dark, tender stories told in a distinctive, lyrical voice, Wolf In White Van will be a wholly satisfying experience.

The book starts with Sean Phillips, somewhere in his thirties, a badly deformed face, a monster who frightens people wherever he goes. He stays in his small apartment in a southern California town. He receives some social security money due to his disability, plus a saving account from his deceased grandmother. When his loved grandmother dies, his father asks him not to come to the funeral due to his deformity. Sean has invented a game that is played by mail called Trace Italian, somewhat like Dungeons and Dragons only on paper, players mail in moves. I don't know anything about these games so I am somewhat lost in reading much of this book. Sean receives money from the players who come and go as usual with this type game.

The book is short, Sean tells his story, goes back and forth in time, in his life, bares his soul. he is an only child. He thinks back. If he were a normal man instead of a freak, he could have lived an ordinary life, had a usual job, married, had children. His game took him through much of the United States, places where he wanted to go but did not. Two teen age kids, a boy and a girl, played the game, then decided to play on site. So they went to Kansas during cold, snowy, winter weather. The girl died from exposure, the young man lived but would have to spend his life in a home for the handicapped. The few characters Sean dealt with were folks playing his game, He very rarely met face to face with folks.

This is a deeply depressing, disturbing book. I read "Universal Harvester" and liked it much better. I checked this book out at the library.

Wolf in White Van is that type of novel where the author clearly wrote the book, then the literary agents picked a random phrase from a section to give it more MEANING. While I can understand why certain people would enjoy this, at the end of the day I couldn't connect with the text, and I don't expect many others to. WiWV follows Sean Phillips, who suffered a horrific accident when he was younger, leaving his face horribly disfigured. Sean lives alone, and runs a mail order RPG out of his home.

The book is obviously a character story, as there is no real plot to speak of. The story follows several of the interactions with others Sean has with others in his day to day life, and reflects back on his rehabilitation, the development of his game, and some of the players in it. But since everything is told in flashbacks, we know nothing major is going to happen, at least not more than already did happen. There are some obvious parallel's between people's escapism in the game to Sean escapism from the problems with his injury, but the keyword is 'obvious'. There are some insightful lines, but nothing that could keep my attention kept drifting.

Look, I think I can some up the problem with this book by quoting Mark Twain, who once said "Truth Is Stranger than Fiction, But It Is Because Fiction Is Obliged to Stick to Possibilities; Truth Isn’t". It seems like Darnielle wanted to tell a story about an alienated man and capture the banality of his life. That's all well and good, but in the end all it leaves is a banal book.

Wolf in White Van tells the story of Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been horribly disfigured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the end result of a failed suicide attempt. Alternating between different moments in Sean's life, he describes peoples' reactions to his appearance and his encounters with others both before and after the shooting. Having recovered from his injury, the isolated and pain-addled Sean earns a small income through his very own play-by-mail role-playing game called Trace Italian. The snail-mail game ultimately becomes his own secluded realm, a place of solace in which he shares with faceless strangers—two of whom take the fictive world to fatal extremes.

The writing is nothing short of spellbinding. Debut author John Darnielle, who hails from Bloomington (IN) and is the singer-songwriter for the Mountain Goats, writes in lengthy, lyrical sentences, a rather stream-of-unconsciousness style not unlike his music. What's especially enthralling is how the fractured narrative mirrors Sean’s splintered personality. Interestingly, his retro RPG serves as a deflection of his deep-seated guilt even as Sean finds himself potentially culpable for his adolescent fans’ perverse misinterpretations of said game. Darnielle’s novel is reflective of how heavy-metal music, horror films, violent video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and other artistic outlets have been cited for their presumed roles in suicides and mass murders.

I’m quite partial to the story’s open-ended conclusion, though admittedly I really wanted to know what the fates held in store for Sean. The novel's failure to espouse a final answer of his complicity actually works to its effectiveness. Readers will have many questions after they've finished the last page, but our inability to discern Sean's future is as frustratingly elusive and the possibilities of knowing our own ending. Don’t get me wrong, this book is genuine and deserves to be read. The writing alone makes it a worthwhile undertaking. The evocative parallels one draws between life and Trace Italian are compelling. With its infinite choices and labyrinthine storylines, life is not unlike a role-playing game; a meticulous choose-your-own-adventure in which the possibility of Death lurks around every corner—and Death will always prevail in the end.

Despite its grave subject matter, Wolf in White Van is a beguiling story from cover to cover. Vivid and profound, Darnielle's novel is one of the best books I’ve read in a long while. Laced with authenticity and peppered with thought-provoking metaphors and colorful language—and let’s not forget, the lengthy exegesis of 80s cult film, Krull (a favorite from my childhood)—this striking mediation on the puissance of escapism is an absolute must-read.

I have my "rules" when it comes to liking books, it seems -- books shouldn't end on cliffhangers, books should be linear in nature and not jump around in the timeline arbitrarily, books should have a main character I can at least sympathize with, if not like. And yet every once in a while, a book comes along that makes me set my "rules" aside and not only read and enjoy it, but love and recommend it as well. "Wolf in White Van" is one of those books -- it's a difficult book to read, one with a non-linear timeline, a narrator with unpleasant and often morbid thoughts, snippets that seem totally unrelated to the story at hand, and frequent asides into the story of a role-playing game being written by the narrator. And yet I find this to be one of the best books I've read so far this year.

"Wolf in White Van" is told from the point of view of Sean Phillips, a reclusive man with horrible facial disfiguration from an unnamed (at first) accident in his teens. Mostly estranged from his parents and the world at large, he earns some income and maintains some link to the outside world through his business of creating and managing role-playing games -- not tabletop or online, but via mail. His most popular game, the post-apocalyptic "Trace Italian," soon leads to tragedy, as two teenagers try to bring their gameplay into the real world with terrible consequences. In the aftermath of the disaster, as Sean faces accountability for his role, he must come to terms with his past... and the events that both separated him from the world at large and led to the creation of "Trace Italian."

Normally I hate books that don't follow a linear timeline -- I prefer a story laid out in an orderly fashion, without relying on flashbacks and flash-forwards to fill things in. But somehow, "Wolf in White Van" is all the better for its non-linear timeline. The story gradually pieces together as Sean relates it, mixing current events with events from his childhood and teen years, memories of his time in the hospital and of putting his game together, and even samples of the flavor text from his game. In this way the reader gains a slow understanding of what happened, and is eventually able to put it together for themselves.

Sean himself is a difficult character to like and understand, his mindset rather morbid at times, and yet it's hard not to sympathize with him. He's a lonely man, one who has felt like an outcast most of his life even before the accident that set him apart from humanity, and his efforts to reconnect with humanity in general via his games are inadequate but strangely compelling. His obsession with Conan the Barbarian may seem like a quirky aside, but in a way it helps add to the general feel of how much of a misfit Sean sees himself as -- in a way, he's a Conan of his own, wandering through a strange world while trying to abide by his own inner code of honor, even if it makes no sense to others.

I've never read anything else by John Darnielle, but his writing is wonderful. It holds the reader's attention and weaves clear, brilliant pictures in the mind. His characters are sympathetic, even when they have unpleasant sides, and he manages to keep the multiple threads of his story together even with a timeline that jumps forward and backward repeatedly throughout the book. I'd be interested in reading more by this author.

I read "Wolf in White Van" over the course of a few days -- it's a short novel, but not necessarily an easy one. It's as difficult and messy as real life can be, with an equally difficult and messy protagonist and a story that demands a bit more from the reader than your average novel. But it's well worth a read, and promises great things for its author.

I enjoy Darnielle's writing style and think he's very talented. With Wolf in White Van, the entire story is told from the POV of Sean, who was disfigured by an "accident" as a teenager. As others have said, the story is roughly told in reverse. This choice worked with mixed results. With regard to Sean's story, I thought it was effective. It didn't work as well when it came to Lance and Carrie, because knowing their fate undermines any potential suspense. Because Sean is such a dark and disturbed character, spending the entire book in his head was a bit uncomfortable. (Well done, Darnielle!) I was curious as heck, though, and hoped for a big reveal in the end. Be forewarned, there is no big reveal or neat wrap-up. There's a lot to glean along the way, though.

*Spoiler below*

My interpretation is that Sean and Lance and Carrie were similar in that they were young, impulsive, naïve kids who got too caught up in their fantasies and made bad choices. Sean's game, Trace Italian, is full of decision trees and the branches of possibilities which unfurl after each decision is made. Sean made a bad choice. Lance and Carrie made a bad choice together. Those choices sent them down unpleasant paths. It was really nothing more than that. Sean said that Trace Italian was never meant to end--no one was supposed to penetrate it. He said no one would ever come close to the Trace, because there were layers and layers of dungeons and sub-dungeons. Maybe we were never meant to truly penetrate Sean's psyche to understand his disturbing preoccupations and unfathomable choice. There simply is no neat ending.

This book is written in an unusual style, with an unusual hero. Sean Phillips runs several role playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons type), they are very old school—they are text based. This is how Sean supports himself, since he had a very disfiguring and severe injury years ago.

The story sort of starts in the middle, going forward through a court trial that Sean is involved in, and alternates between this current time and the past, before and after his injury. The story is made up entirely of Sean's memories, skipping around from various points in his life. The story of Sean's memories has two themes, the court trial and what led up to it, and the injury and what led up to that.

As the story unfolds, you are trying to determine what led up to these dual issues. The book gives small clues throughout and builds on this.

I like stories with unusual heroes, and stories with multiple threads that intertwine. This book was very well written—the author is a composer and music/lyric writer, and this is evident in the prose—the word “lyrical” came to mind even before I knew the author wrote lyrics. I enjoyed the book while I was reading it. I like books that build up to a climax.

However, I like my books to actually HAVE that climax, to have a solidly satisfying conclusion. This book seemed to promise to reveal the mystery of Sean's injury, and the details and ending of the court trial, and...nothing. I get it that the author wanted to leave it mysterious and we are supposed to come up with something (and maybe each person decides on an ending that is different because we are all different). And maybe the answer is, There IS no answer. But for me personally, I just like to my books to have the answer at the end, so I was disappointed. Just an unsatisfying ending, and so neither theme felt complete. It was almost like the last chapter was missing!

This book is written in an unusual style, with an unusual hero. Sean Phillips runs several role playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons type), they are very old school—they are text based. This is how Sean supports himself, since he had a very disfiguring and severe injury years ago.

The story sort of starts in the middle, going forward through a court trial that Sean is involved in, and alternates between this current time and the past, before and after his injury. The story is made up entirely of Sean's memories, skipping around from various points in his life. The story of Sean's memories has two themes, the court trial and what led up to it, and the injury and what led up to that.

As the story unfolds, you are trying to determine what led up to these dual issues. The book gives small clues throughout and builds on this.

I like stories with unusual heroes, and stories with multiple threads that intertwine. This book was very well written—the author is a composer and music/lyric writer, and this is evident in the prose—the word “lyrical” came to mind even before I knew the author wrote lyrics. I enjoyed the book while I was reading it. I like books that build up to a climax.

However, I like my books to actually HAVE that climax, to have a solidly satisfying conclusion. This book seemed to promise to reveal the mystery of Sean's injury, and the details and ending of the court trial, and...nothing. I get it that the author wanted to leave it mysterious and we are supposed to come up with something (and maybe each person decides on an ending that is different because we are all different). And maybe the answer is, There IS no answer. But for me personally, I just like to my books to have the answer at the end, so I was disappointed. Just an unsatisfying ending, and so neither theme felt complete. It was almost like the last chapter was missing!

Ahoy there mateys! Though the first mate and I have very different reading tastes, occasionally we do recommend books to each other. Books the first mate introduced to me included xom-b, holes, and the perks of being a wallflower. He and I both read the following:

wolf in white van (John Darnielle)

We were talking about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so I ordered asked him to write a review. So you get one from me and a bonus additional review from me crew. Please note that I write like I talk and the first mate writes like he thinks. Hope you enjoy!

From the First Mate:

A professor of mine once opined that while anyone can start a poem, it takes a poet to finish one. Many years later, after having read several novels written by poets, I’ve come to the opinion that the literary skill set that allows a poet to craft stunning poems typically doesn’t translate to prose. Most often you get Gregory Corso’s The American Express: poetic inclinations smashing headlong into the requirements of story. But sometimes, just sometimes, you get poetry in your prose; mystical words skittering just along the edge of story requirements.

Like most, I know of John Darnielle from his work with (as?) The Mountain Goats. The “about the author” section of Wolf in White Van states “he is widely considered one of the best lyricists of his generation,” and I’d have to agree with that assessment. Much as I consider Bob Dylan a poet (an easier position to hold now more than ever), I’ve long considered Darnielle a poet, and a damn good one at that.

Central to the story of Wolf in White Van is an accident that our narrator, Sean, just barely survived when he was in high school and which has left him permanently disfigured and on disability insurance. While recovering from the accident, Sean develops a post-apocalyptic role-playing game that later supplements his income and allows him to live a modest and reclusive lifestyle. We’re told that the name of the game, Trace Italian, comes from a style of medieval fortifications, trace italienne, in which there are “triangular defensive barricades branching out around all sides of a fort: stars within stars within stars, visible from space, one layer of protection in front of another for miles.” And, to be honest, such a description is quite apt for the structure of the novel itself.

Darnielle protects the core of his story, Sean’s accident, with layers of other story fragments. We learn about the progress of several of the players of Trace Italian and some horrific fallout thereof. We learn about Sean’s love of Conan tales and his fantasies that spring from it. We learn about Sean’s recovery from his accident and some of what his life was like before it. All of it told fragmentally and non-chronologically. Typically we’re told of how something ends before learning of how it begins. And each fragment, of course, builds on the one that lays next to it. But we are never given reasons for events. The why of what we’re told is almost always hidden from view.

While reading Wolf in White Van, I found it felt very similar to Haruki Murakami’s very early work Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, as all three novels have a poetic, dreamlike manner to them in which the story drifts from fragmented moment to fragmented moment. I tend to like such novels, but I can certainly understand where others would find the work frustrating; I’m fairly certain the Captain would hate it. I will certainly be reading Darnielle’s next novel when it comes out.

From the Captain:

I was forewarned. Got to 18%. Hated it. Should’ve listened.

I'll start by saying I hate three star reviews. They're neither hot nor cold, and nobody cares about lukewarm beverages or reviews. That being said, I neither loved nor hated this story and suspect I will, in a while, forget that I even read it. Perhaps I'm wrong; in which case, if I find myself continuing to think about the story, or the main character, I'll happily revise my review.

First, what I liked:
- The title. Very evocative. The first time I heard about it, the image lodged itself in my brain. As I turned the pages, I kept wondering when the meaning of the title would surface, and on this point, Darnielle rewards the reader. Well done.
- The cover design of the book. Superficial? Yes. But what amazing cover art. And it ties in nicely with the story.
- The sense of mystery driving the story. Propulsion, for lack of a better phrase. Once I started the book, I felt compelled to finish it -- and that's a big credit to the author's writing style and his ability to dangle a figurative carrot just out of reach. You may know that the story begins in the present and slowly moves backwards into the past. I admit to being a sucker for non-linear stories, so this is like catnip for me. At the start of the book, an undefined catastrophic event occurs to Sean, the narrator/protagonist, and Darnielle very skillfully spins the rest of the yarn in such a way to make you ask, over and over again, what happened? As others have noted, the rest of the story is fragmented into subplots -- about Sean's game, about two teenagers involved in the game, about his friends who may or may not have been involved in the undefined disaster -- and I had the feeling (the hope?) that the big reveal about the undefined catastrophic event would - somehow - make sense of everything. Tie all the loose ends together. As you've no doubt guessed by now, that is most definitely not the case. However: the sense of mystery that Darnielle weaves is undeniable.
- A sense that multiple readings may - MAY - be rewarded with new insight.

What I didn't care for:
- You see it above. Nothing resolves. Some people are OK with that. I, generally, am not. It's not that I expect everything to be tied up with a bow at the end. I get it; life isn't always (or even often) like that. But in this case, I expected more. The exact cause and circumstances of the inciting event at the start of the novel aren't revealed until the last few pages of the book, although Darnielle does tip his hand through the story so it doesn't come as a big shock. On the other hand, when I reached the end, I felt like I saw it coming, but I was hoping for something more. And I can imagine the author saying, "That's right! There *is* nothing more! Don't you get it?" Perhaps I'm way off base. I don't know the author, so it's anyone's guess. But that's *my* guess. And for the most part, I have no truck with that point of view. Simple. Sean, the protagonist, invents a role-playing game called Trace Italian. At one point he admits that there's no way to "win" or even end the game. It just goes on and on. And that, in a nutshell, is a symbol for the entire story.
- There are a fair amount of philosophical questions posed by the narrator which pertains to the nature of fate, will, and freedom of choice. The questions are, I think, very interesting. But how they're woven into the story, not so much. The questions - and the way they're essentially posed to the reader - reminded me strongly of Cormac McCarthy novels -- No Country for Old Men, especially. But, in my opinion, McCarthy does it better.
- Another the store reviewer wrote something that I thought was extremely interesting about the novel -- that it only really makes sense to those who have stood on the edge of a steep ledge and fought the urge to throw yourself over. Or something to that effect. That notion hit me stronger than anything I read in the story. I can see where the reviewer was coming from -- it makes sense within the context of the story. However, that idea resonates with me a lot more than this story. And that's just a fancy way of saying that the ideas in the novel are a lot more interesting than the story itself.

When I finished Wolf In White Van, my first thought was Jesus God.

I was driving Mr F on his nightly ride. The ride usually takes 28 minutes, but as we neared the end of it he wasn't really sleepy, so I took us around a different subdivision, one where on a high curve you can look to your left and see houses the size of resort chalets, giant monstrous cavernous things that tower above the road and have more windows than anyone could need. They're always dark, these houses. You never see anyone in them, not going in, not coming out, not moving around inside. In one there is sometimes a dim glow of the kind of small lamp certain people leave on at night, a 40-wtt bulb that bleakly illuminates framed prints and a set of leather couches. The houses seem too big, so large that they must be inhabited by people larger than those we see on the streets.

On the right, off this curve, is a long dark expanse of forest, sloping away to the nature trails where the boys and I walk, and beyond that, a few houses visible before the vast gulf of Lake Mendota. Off in the distance in this direction far away and tiny is the state capitol, whose dome can just barely be made out glowing white and granite.

There's almost nobody ever out on the roads when we do these drives. We go by car dealerships and through an industrial park where I can see call center jobs' cubicles through windows of rectangular buildings, past the tall glass building where I want to have my office someday, through sleepy suburb streets and past a church, St. Bernard's, where as you sit by the red light next to Roman Candle pizzeria, which burnt the crust the only time we ever ordered a pizza from them, you can see a light from inside the church glowing through the stained glass window and creating a halo around the portrait of St. Bernard's head.

It's that kind of atmosphere that I was in as I listened to Wolf In White Van the past few days. Wolf In White Van is a book made for quiet solitude, for long silences and soft darkness, but after that you will want to turn on all the lights, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, listen to children play... something to wipe away the Jesus God of the story.

Wolf In White Van is narrated by, and is about, Sean, and revolves around two significant events in his life: his accident, which has left his face in such a state as to draw confused stares from children and to make Sean compare himself, eating candy while watching The People's Court, to an octopus feeding; and, second, how a game he created -- a mail order game, in which people write in their turns trying to figure out a role-playing type adventure set in an apocalyptic future -- had inadvertently caused the death of a young girl when she and her boyfriend got carried away and tried to act the game out in real life.

Over and across and back and through those two things, Sean slowly unfolds his story as an unpopular near-loner in school whose head was filled with stories of Conan the Barbarian and terrible images beyond even what he reads in his books, all the way to a future where he sits in his house, supported by insurance money and revenues from his mail-order game, visited once a week by a nurse he calls Victory.

It is as sad and lonely a book as I've ever read, and Sean's story makes no real distinction, in his telling it, between what really happened to him and what he imagines his players doing in the game as they send in their moves: the imaginary world of the game is, he knows, not real, but it was this world that got him through his accident -- that's how he always refers to it, and it's revelatory when he describes the accident-- and the aftermath of it: creating this world in his mind, planning the game, carried him through long days staring at the ceiling of the hospital.

The last half-chapter of the book, though, is truly apocalyptic, and I use that in the most literal sense of the word: an event that changes one's understanding of the world surrounding us, either through changing the world or changing us, or both. Sean details the day leading up to the accident, the slow hypnotic crawl of the day that ended up being a pivotal moment in his life.

There's no sense that Sean hates his life after the accident, nor that he hated it before it: he describes Southern California, just before the accident, as beautiful, scorning the people who scorn it; afterwards, he describes his life in similar terms as the book jumps back and forth.

Wolf In White Van is short on explanations and long on details -- the way life is. Even though much of the book is Sean's internal imagination, it feels more real than similar books about similar people or subjects. In its sheer inscrutable nature, Wolf In White Castle perfectly conveys how it must feel to be Sean, before and after and during these events. It is a chilling, sad, sober book that made me feel bereft at the end, the kind of book where my body didn't quite know how to react. Wolf In White Castle creates an emotion that is hard to explain. Call it incongruous sorrow: a feeling created by a series of events that should not have created that feeling. It's an emotion I suspect all of us have felt at some point, a low point in our lives that should not exist based on everything that has happened, and yet there it is.

The ending of the book made me understand, for just a brief moment, that other people have felt such moments, that they exist for everyone, and that making it past moments like that is part of living. The ending made me feel like I should be crying, but I couldn't because it didn't make sense to cry. It made me feel like I needed people around me at the same time I wanted to be alone. It made me, as I drove along that high ridge and looked at first the dark houses, then the faraway capitol building, then my son starting to doze in the seat next to me, think Jesus God and then be glad that I was only listening to such a moment, rather than living it myself.

I'd like to give this book an awesome review, because I really enjoyed the writing style and the author's ability to explore and dissect emotional and philosophical issues, but to tell the truth, I found the story very dissatisfying. It was not apparent to me that the character grew in any way, or overcame any particular obstacles, because nothing had changed by the end of the book. There's never even a "big reveal" moment when you find out "Oh! That's why!" By the time you get to the end, you already know all but the smallest, most insignificant details, and it just feels like a letdown. I was honestly doing mental double-takes at the end. I was listening to the audiobook, read (very well, I might add) by the author, so when I hit the end, my first thought was that my MP3 player must have just run out of battery or something, but no, it was the end.

I feel bad giving this kind of review, because, as I said, this guy is a talented writer, and I do believe he'll go on to write some really great stuff. But a key element of any story at all is character growth. Your protagonist has to face an obstacle, overcome it, and come out the other side a better (or at least different) person for it, and I can't honestly say that that happens in this one.

No matter how much praise I was hearing for Wolf in White Van, finding out that it was written by John Darnielle (of The Mountain Goats fame) gave me pause - not because of anything inherently wrong with Darnielle, but because of so many bad experiences with people famous for another field who dabble in writing. But Darnielle does himself proud here, because whatever my issues with Wolf in White Van (and I do have some), there's no arguing that Darnielle is a fantastic writer, one who can create remarkable images, astonishing scenes, and a beautiful sense of mood that permeates every page of Wolf in White Van. Nominally the story of Sean, a disfigured young man whose main interactions with the world come in a text-based adventure people play through the mail, Wolf in White Van ultimately doesn't feel like it's about anything so much as it's an examination of Sean's mind and the experiences that made him who he is. Oh, there are things that happen in Wolf in White Van - a court case, a strange correspondence with a player, and the cause of Sean's disfigurement, among others - but Wolf never seems to be interested in its story so much as it's interested in how Sean expresses himself and deals with the world. And to that end, Wolf in White Van is filled with incredible scenes and moments, from an exploration of Sean's imaginary game world to a surprisingly honest conversation with two teenagers outside of a convenience store to his imagined stories of his medications that help him cope with his reliance upon them. The problem, ultimately, is that Wolf in White Van feels a little more like a collection of beautiful, wonderfully-realized scenes than a coherent whole; the lack of throughline can occasionally become frustrating, and while Sean is interesting, there's never really a sense of focus or clarity to the novel. Is it an exploration of Sean's sadness and the painful incident that shaped his life? Is it about how his game helps him to cope with the world? Is it about how coping mechanisms and escaping from reality can ultimately lead us to retreat too far from the world? Or is it just about exploring Sean's psyche and traveling through the rooms of his mind like players travel through his text-based world? Ultimately, it's hard to say whether Wolf is about any of these, or all of them, or something else. And yet, you can't easily dismiss Wolf, either, not when it's as beautifully written and hauntingly told as it is. I walked away from Wolf in White Van impressed with what it accomplished and adoring Darnielle's writing, but wishing he could focus a little more and pull his ideas into something more cohesive and whole. Is Wolf in White Van worth reading? I'd be hard pressed to come up with a reason why you shouldn't, but be aware that, to borrow an idea from Darnielle's other career, it feels more like a collection of great songs than it does a single album, if that makes sense.

At first, I thought this was just some angsty midlife crisis Gen-Xer story. I find myself pretty suspicious of books where the narrative jumps around in time so much. But then I got to the explanation of Trace Italian and I was hooked. This is more my thing. A play-by-mail RPG seems so pretentious, and it could have been just another "retro" thing, but the world Sean Phillips presents to the reader is fascinating. Not necessarily in the detail, but in how he has constructed everything. He's created a sedate and undoubtedly addictive game, but he intends no player to ever win. In fact, it seems like he has made it impossible to do so in the span of his life. And that's just really intriguing, to me.

From this bit of storytelling, I was better able to relate to Sean, and the theme of the story--the general meaningless of life and our own actions--just showed through so strongly. Given how depressing this book is, I can't see myself handing it over to someone for a recommendation, but I'd certainly back up someone's decision to read.

The audiobook, ready by the author himself, is of a pretty good quality, and I always love to hear how an author would read their work, as you know you're getting each line exactly as they intended.

I admit that I, like others, was expecting a higher quality "Ready Player One", whereby the gimmicky 80s nostalgia namedrops would be replaced with more substantive fantasy play turned reality.
That was there in the most basic sense but Wolf in White Van goes so much further, to darker realms of the psyche and human nature. The storyline itself is pretty straightforward and short, but the writing is exquisite. It reveals key facts slowly, over time, and sometimes when you least expect them. This technique is hard to pull off when you reveal so much basic information up front, but he does a great job with it.

It's the story of a rich internal life looking outward, and while some plot points don't seem to find resolution (why 4, not 5 stars) it doesn't detract from the character we get to know.

This is not an easy book. Rather, this is a book that provides great rewards to patient and diligent readers. It begins so cryptically that it is almost impossible to follow and enjoy. Midway through the second chapter, almost any reader who has made it that from will be completely hooked. I read the entire book in one day simply because I had to. John Darnielle's brilliant prose and bold non-linear structure made me unable to put this down. The novel unravels like a deep maze, revealing our greatest fears along the way. It's almost like a modern choose-your-own-adventure where you don't actually get to make the choices (but the illusion of choice is always there). As you get deeper into the this strange world, you realize just how clear everything is. And clarity makes the world take on a whole new depth. Read this. You won't be disappointed unless you really want to be.

Edit: A lot of reviewers seem to suggest you can't get into this book if you aren't a gamer. I'm not a gamer. I have never been interested in any role playing games, and I don't own a gaming console. I still love this book and found it captivating, haunting, and relatable.

I got a (free) copy of this one after Macmillan’s literary fiction panel at BookCon. Although I’d heard of the Mountain Goats before (mostly from a T-shirt worn by John Green, if I’m being terribly honest), I’d never heard any of their songs. After a brief YouTube excursion, I’d gotten a sampling and was ready to dive into the book.

Wolf in White Van is smart and scary. I love the idea of a handwritten, snail-mail RPG in today’s technology-drive society; it’s clever enough to be worthy of such a complicated narrator. The transitions between past and present — as well as game and reality — are managed clearly. Somehow, even though it’s clear to the reader which is which, these transitions still somehow manage tho show the ways in which a role-playing game can start to blur the line between fantasy and reality. The narrator’s brilliance and disturbance are fascinating and terrifying at the same time. He’s not entirely honest — either with the reader or with himself, I suspect — but he’s interesting. Worth a read if you don’t mind some heavy/disturbing subject matter.

The novel Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle unfolds backward in time. Told in this manner, there is no “what if,” there’s only “then” or “because.” The novel opens when the main character, Sean, a game designer, is cleared of responsibility following a tragic accident. In his game, people are put in a difficult situation, and have to try to go somewhere better. He developed the game during his own long and painful recovery from a tragic accident of his own doing.

He knows perhaps better than anyone that there’s no going back in time. He doesn’t know why he made the choices that he did to cause his accident. He doesn’t understand what made those players go off the script any more than the player who got frustrated with the game and rather than fading away as most players would made the choice to end his own life in the game.

In a conventional novel, you see the direction the characters are heading, and sometimes you want them to do something different, something that could put them on a different path. But written in this format, I didn’t get the same sense of change being possible. I did see how Sean made the best of a very difficult situation, but continues to feel the consequences every day.

Read this book if … your body is ready. WiWV is a crazy ride, short as it is. Read it also if you’re already a fan of The Mountain Goats. The novel reads as if Darnielle expounded on one of his angsty death ditties–short chapters feel like verses, and the rhythmic prose moves the story along to a steady beat. Make sure you listen to “The Sunset Tree” on repeat while you read.

Don’t read this book if … disjointed narratives bother you. This plot doesn’t move linearly, and it may take some careful reading to follow along. A casual reader may still find it entertaining, and Darnielle’s voice is captivating whether you know what he’s talking about or not, but WiWV requires a good deal of attention to keep pace with the experimental story structure and keep track of the heavy symbolism.

This books is like … the dark, scary version of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, in which a virtual reality game is substituted for a written one and the whole story is told from the perspective of players instead of the creator. On the level of narratives, WiWV reminds me of Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things and, on a lesser scale, of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist or maybe Mao II, but without the over-the-top, self-adoring postmodern mumbo jumbo (mumbo jumbo that I deeply love, so don’t get me wrong).

See my full review here: http://litbeetle.com/2014/10/14/on-john-darnielles-wolf-in-white-van/

This is one of the best books I have read in 2014. Although some have compared the reverse-chronology narrative to Memento, I think it bears more resemblance to the back-masked messages that give the book its title. I'd like to write a lot more about this, but as it's a slim book that more about depth of character than action I'd hate to spoil the end. Suffice it to say that I was very moved by the idea of the healing role that fantasy worlds and personal creativity have on people who feel alienated and alone. Like Memento or Irreversible, however, I don't think this book would have the same impact if told in chronological order. The resonance of the story comes from knowing the end before we know the choices that got the narrator to that point. The journey being much more important here than the goal. Wonderfully done!

SIDE NOTE: I might have to go check out the Mountain Goats now. I've never even heard of this band.

I bought this book without expecting much out of it. I follow John's music and love his column on the back page of Decibel every month, but wasn't sure how his writing would translate to a full length novel. I got this for Xmas and while waiting for family to arrive I figured I'd read a few pages to get a feel for it, I was reading another two books at the time so I wasn't trying to start the book. I ended up reading 50 pages and then finishing the book in the next few days. This is definately a story for outsiders, anyone looking at society from the other side of the lense. People that don't want to put down the things they loved in their formative years, which Sean found a way to live in that world forever.

Trace Italian is such an interesting environment that I wish it was a real game and John does an amazing job of finding a very distinct and unique voice in Sean and every page drew me more and more into the character and his story. I can't recommend this book highly enough, for anyone on the outside.

We know from the novel's first pages that Sean Phillips has been involved in some kind of an "accident". An accident so serious that his survival was in question for some time, and one from which Sean will never escape the consequences as he is now permanently disfigured. So disfigured, in fact, that he rarely leaves his house because of the attention he draws. At one point he reveals that the sight of his face is so shocking that "unless you work in the medical field, you're not prepared to see me."

Sean relies on his imagination to push forward through his difficult recovery and rehabilitation, and in that process creates a fantasy role playing game called "Trace Italian", in which players try and make their way to a safe fortress in a post apocalyptic America. This is just before the internet age, 1990, and players take their turns by mail, for which Sean charges a small monthly fee. When the internet does make its appearance, Sean finds that his subscriber base remains steady, with no shortage of people nostalgic for these games of their childhood.

The revelation that there has been a serious accident with serious consequences but without details makes for a unique narrative structure in which, through Sean's memories and ruminations of game play and players, the reader slowly learns more and more of Sean's backstory, until finally all is revealed about that fateful moment. The result is a contemplative novel with beautifully illustrative and at times breathtaking prose, somewhat in the mold of a Robinson or Harding.

This is a novel about being different, and getting to know Sean both prior to and after the accident, the reader learns that though he didn't turn heads on the street prior to the event, he felt very different. There is a scene in the book when Sean learns that he will be moving to some kind of transitional care home after he turns 18, and his mother, feeling guilty, but also feeling like she can't properly care for him at home says that she worries he'll be lonely. Sean, revealingly, states "I was going to be lonely anyway." This novel's strength is putting the reader in the shoes of one different, one who is truly lonely, and getting a feel for how they cope in a world in which it seems they were never meant to thrive. Darnielle actually gives us a few characters through which we learn these lessons, some friends before the event, some game players who take the fantasy too far, but in the end it is mainly through Sean and his two selves, his before and after, that we learn the most. Wolf in White Van will leave you wondering if people could somehow sense the disfigurement in the soul of a person like Sean, could the outward disfigurement have been avoided? And whether there is a Sean somewhere within your own sphere of influence, and could you know it?

I found this book interesting from the standpoint of presenting a very different, but plausible, view of reality. The protagonist lives in and reacts to a skewed world view based on a fantasy. He pays the price early on, and the novel follows the narrative of his life as it unfolds.

I liked the way the author developed the personality of the main character and story line that developed. It is a rather dark tale, but there remains a hint of redemption. Sean lives out his shattered life, but still manages to hold on to a thread of the dark romanticism that was his downfall and to use this to give his constrained life some meaning.

Full of contained power and remarkable insight, Wolf in White Van highlights John Darnielle's capabilities as a fiction writer in addition to his musical talents. The novel is book-ended by two tragedies, one in the narrator Sean's adult life and one remembered from his adolescence, with the story told backward. Though non-linear stories are becoming more commonplace, rarely are they executed as well as this one. Sean's earlier incident is ever-present throughout the story in hints and partial memories. It shapes his life and worldview and reaction to the later tragedy, yet the end of the story, the true inciting incident, still delivers a shock. A very strong effort from a relatively new author, Wolf and White Van will whet your appetite for future works of fiction and music from Darnielle.

I should have known this book would be so good. Sure it starts out a little slow, we aren't given all of the details up front, but the book unwinds and answers all of its questions well and tells a great story on the way. The contrast between the narrator and his escapist game and the tragedy of his choices and L + C blended together well and created a fascinating world. The story is short and it takes a bit to get started but it's definitely worth the read.

As a teenager, Sean was hospitalized and left profoundly disfigured; to cope, he absorbed himself in the creation of a post-apocalyptic text-based game, Trace Italian. Wolf in White Van is a novel about internal and external narratives: the stories we take in, the stories we put out, as tools for self-creation and self-expression, especially but not uniquely as it relates to trauma. It has a vaguely inverted narrative, working backwards from Sean's adult life to his teenage injury. That's a lot going on for a fairly short book, and it works as often as not. The timeline can be difficult to keep straight, and the contrived narrative as often feels coy as compelling (in particular, I'm not happy that mental health issues are a "reveal"); Sean's voice is distant and cerebral, denying reader investment. But Trace Italian is fascinating, and functions well as a larger metaphor; thematically, the book coalesces. This is an absorbing effort, one which is ultimately successful but which I can't say I particularly enjoyed or recommend.

This is not a sci-fi novel, as the book's plot-synopsis led me to believe. There is nothing mind-blowing about the story or its structure. It's just an extremely well-written contemplation on life choices and mortality that is told mostly in flashback. Maybe in a lesser author's hands, this would have seemed convoluted or might have been confusing, but it's not...at all. It's an extremely touching book that doesn't offer any answers, other than the ones staring us directly in the face, but that's the point. HIGHLY recommended.

You know something is great when you can't stop thinking about it, even if you weren't entirely sure you enjoyed it, exactly. Sean, the disfigured narrator, is so richly brought to life that it triumphantly scores one for the "not entirely necessary" column in the great plot debate.

This novel is paced like how you naturally get to know people. You meet them, a little bit of their past comes up, you make small talk. Later a little more of their past, and they open themselves up emotionally. If you do get to know them well it's through a sequentially erratic pile of details and anecdotes, not a linear A to B "let me tell you about myself."

I appreciated this structure even more the second time through. Sean is a profoundly sublime and tragic character, and this is an unflinching portrait of him and the strange path his life has taken. Part of me wants to comfort him. Part of him has comforted me.

I kept thinking, as I read this, that I've never read anything like it before. I've now done over 50 the store reviews & I don't think I've previously used the word "beautiful" but this is a beautiful & amazing book. Not pleasant or fun or nice but, boy, did it ever get in there & tell the truth, especially about trauma! I volunteer at a group for victims of violence & I printed out one of his sentences as a poster for them. ("It is hard to overstate how deep the need can get for things to make sense.") See what I mean?

John's writing is comfortable, and gives you a safe, familiar "home" feeling as you read it, despite the occasional darkness of the content. He does a brilliant job illustrating both the absolute freedom and the maddening restriction of being stuck, alone, in one's own home... haunting your own small spaces while lost in the vast expanses of your own mind.

I started reading songwriter John Darnielle’s novel, Wolf in White Van, with low expectations. After a dozen or so pages, I was hooked. Darnielle explores themes of isolation and creativity, and the ways in which fantasy can reward and punish. The power of imagination is such a force in life, and Darnielle presents a protagonist whose vivid imagination may well have saved his life. Readers who can become comfortable with an unusual novel are those most likely to enjoy this one.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

There is something so refreshingly honest about this novel that the lyricism that Darnielle employs in his music hints at - in novel form, it feels as if you're diving deeper into the settings and true feelings reflected in a Mountain Goats song. This story is a stream-of-consciousness effort more adult than that of Holden Caulfield but not over-the-top by any means. It's honest, raw, beautiful storytelling that embraces themes of mature reflection on adolescent feeling and action, escapism, and the deep-seated desire to be one with one's own fantasies. At 25 and hopelessly devoted to recapturing the emotions I felt in my youth, this novel resonated with me. I love this book.

As a tremendous fan of John Darnielle and The Mountain Goats, I was thoroughly biased and compelled to love this book. John Darnielle is, without a doubt, one of the best writers of his generation, after all. Anyone who's listened to his music-as-literature songs, with anthologies like "Going To..." or "Orange Ball of..." or "Alpha..." know he can weave powerful stories with only a few syllables.

Wolf in White Van, however, let me down. It's a fine book that doesn't go anywhere. My main criticism of books I don't like goes like this: "The character doesn't change or learn anything. They don't grow." Well, in Wolf in White Van, the character changes, so that complaint isn't really valid. But the change doesn't seem to matter. The character - who has been significantly disfigured - goes on and on about his disfiguration, the circumstances leading up to it, and the circumstances after.

But that's it. I feel like it's the literary corollary of going to a great museum and reading the descriptions of all the dioramas without staring down a single stuffed mastodon, Australopithecus or Saber-toothed cat.

I have a theory about this book. I think that it was a life goal of John to write a novel. This is it. And somewhere in this journey, it may have become more important to finish it than to make sure that it was the right novel to write. It's not fair of me to guess this - I don't know Mr. Darnielle (except through his music) and it's mighty arrogant of me to think I might know what's driving him - but it feels like that's what happened. I doubt he'll write another novel unless it's absolutely stellar.

Rating: 2.5/5

The publisher’s blurb is far more interesting than the book itself. When I read it, I pictured something akin to a dismal Ready Player One: a nerdy escapist protagonist and an imagined game world. Based on the description, I thought that the book would largely be about the world of Trace Italian, its effects on its players, and its damaged creator.

What I got instead was a book more akin to To Rise Again at a Decent Hour: the first-person ramblings of a mentally unstable protagonist. Like To Rise, this is a character-driven novel to the extreme. Plot is extremely peripheral.

For all intents and purposes, the publisher's blurb is accurate . . . but it’s also grossly misleading. The focus of this book is not on Trace Italian or its players. It is almost entirely about Sean’s isolation, his thoughts, and, ultimately (but entirely anti-climactically) his accident.

The book is well written in a meandering, non-chronological way, but it is not the exciting, fast-paced, plot-driven novel you would expect from its description. I would have been much happier with this book if it had been more like its blurb.

This is a stunningly lyric book from a master lyricist. The character is so masterful and realized that it becomes hard at some points to truly view through the lens of fiction. That John Darnielle can put us so intimately behind this ruined face and mind of our protagonist is a stunning accomplishment. I love a book that ends on a knock out and Wolf in White Van does just that.

Conan is scary. John Darnielle's writing pulls you along, trying to find a place that makes sense in the Wolf in White Van. It is an indirect journey and I am not sure I was ever really there. I think I need to read another of his books, just to be sure.

I'm not sure what the author was trying to accomplish here, but whatever it was, he missed it by a wide margin.

There are two key incidents - the death and injury of two people playing the game, and the shooting. The book does not deign to explain either, but spends a great deal of time dancing around both.. I get that the narrator is not entirely reliable and pretty unstable, but novels, even postmodern ones, need some kind of payoff. I feel cheated.

I had not listened to the Mountain Goats (of which the author is the lead singer) prior to reading this book. Most of the reviews I've read here are from dedicated fans, and I feel they may be guilty of the halo effect. The book was ok. It took too long for the book to get moving, and when it finally did it wasn't worth the wait. Too much of the book revolved around Sean's game and its details. If you love choose-your-own adventure stories (creating them not reading them) this book may appeal to you. The interaction between Sean and his parents was painfully uncomfortable and authentic. Darnielle nailed the awkward exchanges and proved he understands the range of conflicting emotions each side shows throughout their ordeal. Overall, it was an ok book, but I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone. If you are a fan of the author you may have a better time with it.

Its not a bad book. It is, however, confusing at times. Nonlinear, jumping back and forth between past, present, and the narrators fictional world.

Did I like it? In a way, yes. Would I read it again? Possibly not. At least not for a while.

It's sad, the story within.

Wolf in White Van is a short novel about a disturbed teenage boy who tries to kill himself and fails. It’s about the isolation and depression many people, and especially adolescents suffer. It’s about the alternate reality fantasies – often in the form these days of role-playing Internet games with gothic settings, heavy weaponry and big boobs – that many troubled teenagers, especially teenage boys, indulge in.

Wolf in White Van was a National Book Award finalist in 2014 and I can’t for the life of me think why.

I guess it has received the critical acclaim that it has because Darnielle’s prose is what many reviewers these days call “lyrical.” I’ll give him a star for that. His book is indeed well written. Although I’ve personally never heard of him, Darnielle is a famous indie rock star and songwriter especially well known for his wordy but really cool “doom rock” lyrics. So while the guy is bit dark and spooky in the recording studio, he knows how to turn a phrase.

I’ll also give him a star for knowing how to keep his readers reading – even a reader like me who has never had the urge to read a Conan the Barbarian comic book or play interactive “get-to-the-next-level” video games. Even for an Old Fart non-Goth guy like me the premise of this novel has a lot of promise: A troubled isolated boy who feels powerless and misunderstood invents a role-playing game that provides other troubled kids with their chance to escape into a world where they can feel powerful and find purpose in their lives. As is inherently true with this central metaphor, there are virtually endless possibilities for a book like this. What kept me reading was the hope that Darnielle would eventually get around to providing an important (ie. actual and not merely virtual) insight as to what it is deep down inside that makes his young protagonist tick. I kept hoping that Darnielle, with the unique insights about teenagers you’d expect of an indie rock star, would eventually get around to enlightening me about what makes kids fall for this kind of alternate reality crap and do destructive things to themselves and others.

In our world today with so many disturbed and isolated young people committing so many horrible acts of violence – think Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, and ISIS for that matter – some smart young author needs to write a lyrical AND thoughtful book that helps explain it all. As I turned the pages I kept thinking Darnielle was going to be that guy.

But he isn’t. He’s just another rock star.

I came into this book as a great fan of the Mountain Goats music, with high expectations and the book wound up exceeding them by a long shot. It also introduced me to a whole new nerd subculture that until the other day I was totally unaware of. This is a book that goes through some really heavy stuff while never getting bogged down. It is both very f-ing dark and extremely positive at the same time. This has done nothing but firm up my belief that John Darnielle is the most talented, creative and intelligent person in entertainment.

This was really great. A gripping story with beautiful sentences. And a protagonist that is wholly alien while utterly familiar. I don't want to give more than that away but this is an excellent read.

Beautifully written, with unexpected structure of both sentence and plot. A vivid, disturbing, powerful glimpse into the mind of a protagonist existing on the fringes of society and sanity. I'm on my third reading already, and there's more to discover every time. Darnielle has proven to be just as skilled and intense a novelist as he is a lyricist.

Like Darnielle's lyrics in The Mountain Goats there is a depth to his fiction writing that seems unforced and engaging. The amount of thought he put into this novel just seems astonishing. It's as if a suburban Borges decided to create one of his alternative universes--but solely in game form (or not). I'm wishing that David Lynch would direct the film version.

Sharks are hard to see. They're that way on purpose, of course, but you don't think about that the first time you see one; you just see the silhouette when it comes up near enough the surface, and it's delightful or terrifying or fascinating; and then maybe you go diving and the same shark is out there, and it's just as hard to see from underneath, and it delights or terrifies or fascinates you so that you don't realize it's the same animal, it's as bright on the bottom as it is dark on top. Maybe you see the same shark a dozen times and you never realize it. And then maybe you go home and write a review about how Wolf in White Van is unfulfilling or inconsistent or meandering or plotless.

The labyrinth wheels all symmetric around an empty center. It tells you how it ends. You know where you're going as soon as you start, and you get there knowing there was nowhere to go, you're leaving the same way you came in, only now you're in the middle of it.

A striking debut novel by John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van is a challenging portrait of youth coming to terms with the power of their anger and their imaginations. Its prose is at times florid, but its imagery and detail are never less than compelling.

I'll admit i'm biased because of my deep love for the Mountain Goats, so take this as a recommendation to other fans who already love the Mountain Goats. You'll find a lot of familiar motifs in the book if you listen to a lot of the Mountain Goats, the struggle to find a coherent narrative in your own life, the struggle of keeping those deep dark thoughts down, and etc... but the book is still very fresh feeling and I look forward to rereading it to understand more. I'd love to hear more from people who just stumbled on this book without prior knowledge of John's music, but i've already read one frustrated one star review who seemed really unfamiliar with the concepts being discussed in the book.

Wolf in White Van is dark but uplifting, and the ending left me feeling empty in a good way.

Would recommend this book to anyone though, fans of John's work or not

I'd expect no less from John Darnielle given the excellence of his Mountain Goats music: A beautifully rendered examination of a consciousness trying to understand itself and explain itself to others at the same time. Pitch perfect evocation of inland SoCal, that quincunx of Pomona, Claremont, Upland, and Ontario, with Montclair sitting in the middle of it all. Darnielle also evokes perfectly a pre-web pre-mobile youth culture that is starkly different from today's intricately connected teen world and yet no different from any youth culture of any decade with its morbid confusion, alienation, extreme fascinations, and overarching loneliness.

I bought this book because I'm a huge fan of The Mountain Goats, however I didn't really like the sound of the plot line and didn't expect to love it. When I first started it I didn't like it much, but the more I read it the more I loved it. This book has stuck with me for months. I can't explain why, but it's resonated heavily. Strongly recommend, one of the best books I've read in the last year.

Just wonderful. Few have the heart, and the ability to express it as well as Darnielle does both here, and in his music. Thoughtful, layered, and extremely-well executed and poignant. It's hard to call this a "debut" novel for Darnielle, since his music is so literary, and he's been at that game for such a long time—nevertheless, while this has the fuzz of a first-time novel all around it, the joy and the wonder therein, this is a seriously solid and often very beautiful work.

First off, forget the publisher’s description of the Wolf in the White Van, it is a gross misrepresentation of the book. The publisher’s description isn’t close to the actual book at all. This is not a thriller. It is a boring, plotless book. The writing is good, but it not put to anything that goes anywhere.

John Darnielle, as a critic with cult tastes and a cult following of his own, is in a unique position to dwell on how we consume pop culture, and how it consumes us in return. This novel examines every line one can draw from existence to media: outcasts seeking refuge, parents seeking scapegoats, artists seeking to express themselves, all of them trying to understand and to be understood. Fans will love this novel, not just fans of Mountain Goats, but anyone who has ever escaped to a world other than their own. Start digging.

This book could have been good, but the author skipped around so much it was hard to know what point in the main character's life you were reading about. Lots of things were alluded to but never fully disclosed. There were many just plain weird, and disjointed statements. I wonder why any publisher would agree to print this. Very disappointing.

I love The Mountain Goats music. Brutal lyrics and gorgeous music. But this novel let me down. No real point to it it seems to me. A great use of language but it seems, to me, for no real point. Depression for depressions sake. Expected much more. Sorry.

What an awful 250 pages of garbage. I still don't know what it was even about. If this was supposed to be some goth, artsy, stylistic cautionary tale about frailty and the human psyche, it failed miserably. The pacing and timeline of this story are all over the place, and not in a good way. Although I understood the central character was troubled, and had committed some horrible crime, the way the information was related made it impossible to decipher, akin to trying to fill a bucket with raindrops, where a lot of time is spent running around trying to catch them, and despite the effort, the bucket is never filled. I went back and forth between chapters constantly, confused and trying to make sense of what I had read. The only feeling, besides confusion, this book produced was regret. Regret I had bought it. Regret that I had wasted time to painfully attempt to make sense of it. Regret that Sean hadn't saved us all a great deal of misery, and ended it the first time he tried, back in the second chapter of a really pointless waste of paper. Regret I didn't buy the one month subscription to People instead....Dumbfounded this book made any list much less the National Book Award for Fiction 2014, I have to wonder what they were thinking...

An explanation of this short book reads like a line from a Portlandia sketch: "There's this kid, and he's really depressed, because nobody really understands him, so he tries to shoot himself, but instead he just blows off his own face, so he's terribly disfigured, but then he invents this role-playing game, like Dungeons & Dragons, and then one of the players dies. Oh, and the author is the front man for a band called the Mountain Goats."

Unfortunately, that's not Portlandia, it's "Wolf in White Van," and it's terrible. The story is (shamelessly) based on the Judas Priest incident from the 80s, and the narrative structure is (shamelessly) based on Christopher Nolan's "Memento." Unlike Nolan, however, Darnielle reveals plot points that defuse tension instead of building tension, resulting in a "climax" that you know is coming and leaves you disappointed.

Also, a warning to anyone (like me) who was recommended this novel because of the RPG themes: this book has almost nothing to do with role playing games. They are incidental to the plot.

Bottom line: this novel tries to wrestle with big issues but is too shallow and poorly structured to make an impact.

P.S. Please consider that this review will almost certainly be judged "unhelpful" by all 7 fans of the Mountain Goats, who appear to visit this page regularly.