I was surprised and moved and amazed page after page after page. Nothing is more terrifying, and more honest, than a story that acknowledges that there is no bright line between guilt and innocence., A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt., 'John Darnielle's novel moves through the mind like a dark-windowed car through a sleepy neighborhood: quiet, mysterious, menacing, taking you places you will never, never get out of your head.' -Daniel Handler 'Wolf in White Van is utterly magnificent.

What makes one person wander into a fantasy world and then wander back out again, unscathed, while another is disfigured by it for life? The way that Darnielle forces you to think about these issues, in a variety of situations, will give you chills. surreal, emotionally explosive, and often weirdly funny. strange and involving novel., will back you onto your heels with its capacity for inventiveness in structure, story, and line-writing., One of the most intense reads of the year. He has an instinctive understanding of fetid teenage emotional states and the 'timelines of meaningless afternoons that ended somewhere big and terrible'. Darnielle's uncanny sense of what it's like to feel marginalized, an outsider, a freak. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy. Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace.

As the creator of Trace Italian-a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail-Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined.

Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. The New York Times Bestseller Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction Winner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adults Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival You may now make your first move.

Wolf in white van reviews