The Clearing - Tapa dura

'There's something musical, even operatic, about this lush, violent and romantic novel. Its impeccably managed structure ushers in storylines and characters like an orchestration on the themes of revenge and redemption, the crescendoes falling away into still images of the water-logged natural world. The morality of the characters is so finely judged that who's standing at the end of the fighting is no certain guide to merit. In a way, the thrilling plot and prodigal nature of the central relationship are the least original aspects of Tim Gautreaux's writing. The story primarily persuades with its realism, its account of life experienced from inside the characters, whose wonder is mixed with the necessity of exploitation or just survival.' -- Will Cohu, Daily Telegraph 'This is a novel so firmly located and vividly realised that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater as you read ... a gripping, action-packed tale, but also a notably intelligent one, its powerful narrative drive counterbalanced and controlled by a meticulous attention to detail and a traditionalist's concern for depth and density .. . Gautreaux is a well established and highly regarded writer [in the US]... the qualitly of THE CLEARING should ensure him a similarly appreciative readership on this side of the Atlantic.' -- Jem Poster, Guardian '[An] excellent novel ... The moral world is clear, but Gautreaux gets away with it because it is fully imagined ... the brothers too are portrayed with care ... What is also distinctively American is the novel's sense of its own gravity. The alertness to good and evil is constant and you feel - almost - that language itself is a moral tool. Because the main characters are supple and convincing, the moral clarity, in the end is persuasive rather than sententious.' -- Spectator 'Near-perfect ... untouchably good' -- Alan Warner, Daily Telegraph 'An extraordinary novel, one of the best I've read in years' -- Annie Proulx 'A modern masterpiece ... A superb novel, from the very first page.' -- Jeffrey Lent (author of IN THE FALL) 'Gautreaux captures the fetid atmosphere of a frontier society poised to join the modern world with great skill, each sentence polished to perfection' -- Independent on Sunday 'An extraordinary novel that feeds on and stokes America's mythology about itself. A shoot-out with the Mafia draws it all together, but the damp, woody air still hangs heavy with death and history in this big, mature triumph of a novel.' -- Good Book Guide 'A fine and exciting novel ... Tim Gautreaux is a literary writer unafraid to tell a brisk and jolting story that keeps the pages turning.' -- Charles Frazier 'An excellent novel' -- Spectator 'Compels you forward like a handcar on a downhill slope, until the final escape ... You read it in wonder.' -- Kent Haruf (author of PLAINSONG) 'THE CLEARING presents the reader with an interesting dilemma: do you give in to the stifling suspense and read quickly, to find out what happens to the novel's vivid characters, or do you go slow, savoring each delicious sentence, and thereby risking, by the climax, a nervous breakdown?' -- Richard Russo 'A gripping, action-packed tale, but also a notably intelligent one ... Gautreaux is a well established and highly regarded writer [in the US] ... the qualitly of THE CLEARING should ensure him a similarly appreciative readership on this side of the Atlantic.' -- Jem Poster, Guardian 'Hereafter, as with Mississippi and Faulkner, Northern California and Steinbeck, Georgia and O'Connor, when I think of Louisiana, I will hear the voice of Tim Gautreaux. He has for me become an enduring presence not just in the world of books but in the American landscape.' -- Robert Olen Butler (author of THEY WHISPER)

Before the Great War, Byron Aldridge had led a charmed life as heir apparent to a Pennsylvania timber empire, and as guide and idol to his younger brother. But he returned from France a different man, drifting away and finally disappearing altogether, until he is discovered working as a constable in a remote Louisiana sawmill. Here, surrounded by cypress swamps and snakes and alligators, men lead lives of backbreaking toil punctuated only by the brutal entertainments offered by the Sicilians who control the whiskey and card games and girls, and by the rough law meted out by Byron. His brother, assuming charge of the mill, struggles to understand him, even as their wives contend with their own hopes and disappointments, and the future grows fearsome for them all. "The Clearing" is a story of family, of what sustains people through loss, of establishing a community in the deepest wilderness and then defending it. Palpably atmospheric, with a remarkable range of characters and emotions, it displays Tim Gautreaux's masterly understanding of time, place, and human nature.