Beneath the Bonfire: Stories, by Nickolas Butler
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Beneath the Bonfire: Stories, by Nickolas Butler
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Nickolas Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, has become an international bestseller and won numerous accolades, including France's Prix Page/America, previously won by Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Now, in Beneath the Bonfire, he demonstrates his talent for portraying "a place and its people with such love that you'll find yourself falling for them, too" (Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea).
Young couples gather to participate in an annual "chainsaw party," cutting down trees for firewood in anticipation of the winter. A group of men spend a weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up and where some still find themselves trapped. An aging environmentalist takes out his frustration and anger on a singular, unsuspecting target. One woman helps another get revenge against a man whose crime extends far beyond him to an entire community. Together, the ten stories in this dazzling, surprising collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America, and they completely capture the memorable characters who call it home.
Beneath the Bonfire: Stories, by Nickolas Butler - Amazon Sales Rank: #691767 in Books
- Brand: Butler, Nickolas
- Published on: 2015-05-05
- Released on: 2015-05-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.47" h x .99" w x 5.78" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Beneath the Bonfire: Stories, by Nickolas Butler Review
“Nickolas Butler follows up his acclaimed debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, with this collection of well-made short stories set in the Midwest. ... Mr. Butler's characters could have emerged from vintage American rock songs, living on small hopes and banding together as best they can.” ―The New York Times
“The stories in Beneath the Bonfire pack a sincere, emotional punch. Nickolas Butler's territory might be the Midwest (which warms this particular reader's heart), but the losses--and hard-won gains are universal. This writer is the real deal.” ―Peter Orner, author of Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge
“I love these stories: they're quiet, careful.As glaciated as their own vistas. Butler's is a deft hand, who as in the title story, takes us beneath the ice and forces us to confront the deepest extents of our friendships, our marriages, our family.Without a doubt, Beneath the Bonfire is a diamond of a collection, shaped and hardened through the profound geologic pressures of love and pain.” ―Bill Cheng, author of Southern Cross the Dog
“Beneath the Bonfire burns with nostalgia for those youthful years when we know too little and surrenders to the later years when we've learned too much. With honesty and tenderness, Butler portrays people at crossroads, as hardened and hopeful as the landscape they can't leave behind.” ―Diane Cook, author of Man V. Nature
“Nickolas Butler's characters lust and cherish and sustain and betray and redeem and console, traveling through every chamber of the human heart, and it's hard to say--based on these excellent stories whether love is the easiest or the most complicated emotion, but it's clearly the best.” ―Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding
“Sentence-by-sentence, Beneath the Bonfire is a truly beautiful collection that offers full and big-hearted tales of people leaning on one another when the world turns on them. It's a love letter to a landscape, yes, but it's also elegiac, funny, and dazzlingly dreamy, a look into the complicated inner lives of outwardly stoic souls. These stories warm and snap your heart all at once.” ―Dean Bakopoulos, author of Summerlong
“These stories kept me reading all night and filled my heart all day. From the surreal to the surprisingly spot-on, Nickolas Butler's greatest gift is his ability to report the rusty truth while still allowing the stainless steel soul of his characters to shine through. For every struggler, scrabbler and dead-ender in these stories, triumph--when it comes, if it comes may be ragged, but it is triumph nonetheless.” ―Michael Perry, author of Coop and Truck
“When I finished Nickolas Butler's stellar debut novel, I thought: Here's a man who sees the saint in all of us. Well, his vision is only getting stronger. The ten stories in Beneath the Bonfire are teeming with the sort of people I know best. Losers at love, failures as parents and daughters and sons, folks hardly able to make ends meet but always striving toward the good. His characters have hearts the size of Wisconsin without ever seeming like they're from anywhere other than the streets we grew up on. And though it hardly seems fair that one man should have access to so many beautiful and dented lives, I'm glad it's Nickolas Butler who does. He's the Midwestern bard I've been waiting my whole life for.” ―Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road and Safe from the Sea
“There's a quiet heartbreak throughout Beneath the Bonfire. Every elemental staple pays off a tree, a chainsaw, a fire, the morel mushroom that blooms into the possible but unexpected disaster with a twist of Butler's mind and wrist. Another wonderful story collection that conjures all the craft of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.” ―Nicole Lea Helget, author of Stillwater
“The stories in Nickolas Butler's Beneath the Bonfire highlight the strength in people during some of their weakest moments. The rich poetry in Butler's gut-wrenching prose makes for a stunning portrait of quiet life in small town America. A universally relatable voice, filled with heart and grit. A truly enjoyable read.” ―Marcus Burke, author of Team Seven
“Sensitive to the human condition, Butler continues to demonstrate his impressive command of atmosphere and humanity.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Butler seemingly came out of nowhere last year with Shotgun Lovesongs. No one had really heard of him, yet he wrote one of the best books of the year. And he continues his success in writing with Beneath the Bonfire.” ―Spencer Daily Reporter
“Impressively original.” ―The New York Times on Shotgun Lovesongs
“Shotgun Lovesongs is the kind of book that restores your faith in humanity.” ―The Toronto Star
“We all have them, right? Those songs that indelibly mark the milestones in our lives? Songs that stir up our deepest feelings and remind us of who we are.…Only the best, most emotionally resonant novels work in the same way. Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs is one of those novels.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Sparkles in every way. A love letter to the open lonely American heartland…A must-read.” ―People on Shotgun Lovesongs
“Totally smitten. That was me, within four pages of the beginning of Shotgun Lovesongs. … This is one of those books you step into, but never want to leave.” ―Reedsburg Times-Press
“A dreamy novel that leaves readers with a lasting impression about friendship and its purpose -- to teach, inspire, and, most of all, fill our hearts with love.” ―Wilkes Barre Times-Leader on Shotgun Lovesongs
“There is also a profound empathy for the characters and the small-town dynamic that the reader will likely share, an appreciation for what 'America was, or could be.'” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Shotgun Lovesongs
“The hearty Midwest, which thrums and beats through tiny Little Wing, Wisconsin -- an Anytown, USA, if there ever was one -- assumes the whole soul of Butler's fetching debut.... Readers can feel the winter cold on the other side of the neon sign and hear the peanut shells crunching underfoot.” ―Booklist on Shotgun Lovesongs
“A beautifully written, big-hearted celebration of the enduring power of different kinds of love.” ―The Independent (UK) on Shotgun Lovesongs
About the Author Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. His writings have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, The Progressive, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. A bestseller in both the United States and France, his debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, received the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, the Great Lakes Great Reads Award, and France's Prix Page/America. Butler graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison before attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their two children.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Beautiful, haunting stories that will stay with you for a while By Carol T. I had the good fortune to read Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs before reading Beneath the Bonfire. Some authors are good at short stories, others are good at longer work. Nickolas Butler is equally good at both. This set of 10 stories is both surprising and relatable because the characters are people we have some level of understanding of even if we don't relate to specific situations. I think my favorite story of the lot is Chainsaw Soiree. But I loved every story in this book and that's unusual for me with a shorts collection.I won't give specifics about the stories in this collection because these need to be read without hints or spoilers about the goings on but I will talk about the presentation. I don't know if I can get my ideas across correctly but there is something deeply personal in the writing of these stories. In how Butler gets to the inner, sometimes darker core of the matter while hovering over the surface look of things. There are also moments of slowness where you get to examine the space between things. By things I mean the settings and the interactions of characters. There is both a simplicity and a complexity in the presentation giving you moments of heart rending understanding of humanity in all of its incarnations – loneliness, illness, violence – the works. These are the people we know and love and hate every day. Even the bits of violence and sexual situations didn't come off as gratuitous or vulgar in any way. He understands how to present the more negative aspects of life ways that read clearly and realistically. He's a writer to watch.You will be thinking about some of these stories long after you've finished them. I had to take pause between each to think about what had just happened but it was hard to stop even for a moment without wanting to get to the next story immediately. These stories deserve reflection, believe me.Highest recommendation.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A MUST READ - By Pamela A. Poddany BENEATH THE BONFIREI am Nickolas Butler's number one fan. Seriously. This guy can write. He hits you in the head and heart both, forcing you to see people for who and what they are, shaking you awake hard and fast so that you SEE the world and people in his stories. And the best part? Butler writes about REAL people with everyday lives, problems, and situations. Things YOU can totally relate to.As with his first book, SHOTGUN LOVESONGS, Butler pulls readers in quickly and never lets them go. His work is just that good. BENEATH THE BONFIRE consists of ten short stories, each of them different and every one of them equally good. Sometimes while reading a book of shorts you probably will run across one or two that just didn't rock your boat; however, this was not true in this book. I loved every one of these stories.I love Butler's writing style. He is SMOOTH. For instance -- "I never argued with Sunny. She'd had a hard life before, and I wanted her life with me to be easy. There were times she pushed me around, times she even gave me black eyes, but it was worth it. Everything was better with Sunny. Even when she was casting flour around the kitchen or accidentally setting the drapes on fire. Being in love with Sunny was like that; it was like a fistfight. She entered every relationship with brass knuckles, and I had a glass jaw for love." SIGH!My favorite was THE CHAINSAW SOIREE which tells the story of a group of friends who have a party each year on the winter solstice. Everyone brings a chainsaw, cutting up dead fall and cleaning up the forest as such, and then parties at an old deserted church. What happens there to two couples has an everlasting life changing effect.The stories all vary in subject matter, the characters are so very real, their situations maybe some that you can relate to. There is violence and some sexual situations, but this all blends in well with the stories and this reader did not find anything offensive or uncomfortable. Butler shows his dark side in some of the stories and guess what? I LOVE his dark side and thoughts.DO NOT miss this book. I can't recommend it enough. Honestly, it is one of the best books I have ever enjoyed.Thank you.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. An Extraordinary Collection of Short Stories ... By delicateflower152 Ten short stories make up the body of Nicholas Butler’s book, “Beneath the Bonfire”. Each one is set in Wisconsin, each one has a dark, emotionally draining tone, and each story deals, in some way, with a loss. That loss may be one of lost love, lost memory, loss of trust, or lost friendship. In some stories, the main character is the cause of the loss. In others, another individual or individuals, who play a significant role in the primary character’s life, precipitates the loss. In only a few of the stories does the main character experience a positive outcome or a personal epiphany.In each of Nicholas Butler’s stories, the characterization is extremely strong. Whether the individual is passive, violent, or psychologically fragile, the character becomes real. As a reader, you may begin to empathize with, become frustrated by, or become angry about the way in which characters react or fail to react to the actions of others. Further, Nicholas Butler’s ability to pull the reader into the characters’ lives is extraordinary. Without consciously doing so, the reader feels the tension the character feels, experiences their fear as well as their hope for a different outcome, and yet knows that the course of the story is beyond the character’s control.As a reader, you will find each of the stories comprising “Beneath the Bonfire” as good as, if not better than, the story preceding it. Each can be read without reading the previous story, thus you need not read this book in one sitting. However, the quality of Nicholas Butler’s writing is so good that you will discover you cannot stop reading and will find yourself finishing “Beneath the Bonfire” in one sitting.
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