She also has an affair with Poe, whom she dated before she was married. Lee lives in Connecticut and is married to the wealthy Simon, who does not appear directly in the novel. Lee English: Isaac's older sister who escapes their hometown to attend Yale University where she feels insecurity due to her social class and where she grew up. Becomes incarcerated, sacrificing himself to allow Isaac to leave his hometown. Becomes implicated in the aforementioned murder as he and Isaac try to leave Buell in the opening of the novel. Receives an opportunity for an athletic scholarship to play football at Colgate University, though declines. Becomes implicated in a murder at an old trainer plant, then resolves to ride the rails to Berkeley, California to become a student of physics with $4,000 stolen from his father's personal savings, but is ultimately unsuccessful and returns to Pennsylvania.īilly Poe: Twenty-one year-old best friend of Isaac, former high school football star, though he does not share his friend's dedication to academics. Remains to help care for his elderly father. A recent high school graduate, who, despite his academic potential, does not attend college and has little hope for leaving his hometown or achieving economic mobility. Isaac English: Nineteen year-old protagonist of American Rust. Additionally, it was named one of Newsweek's "Best. It was a top-10 choice for The Washington Post, a top-100 choice for the Kansas City Star, and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009. The novel also won the 2009 Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Idaho Statesman, The Economist, and Taylor Antrim of The Daily Beast all voted American Rust one of the best novels of 2009. Philipp Meyer has accomplished that feat on his first attempt." Accolades Michiko Kakutani wrote for The New York Times: "'American Rust' announces the arrival of a gifted new writer - a writer who understands how place and personality and circumstance can converge to create the perfect storm of tragedy." Roger Perkins of The Telegraph called the novel "a terrifically impressive dissection of loyalty and honour." Michael Heaton of The Plain Dealer ( Cleveland) praised Meyer's "gift for illuminating his tense, grim story with sparse but glittering detail." Vick Mickunas of Dayton Daily News wrote, "Novelists spend entire careers trying to write even one classic book. Geordie Williamson, head literary critic of The Australian, compared Meyer to Steinbeck in a radio interview, saying "Steinbeck is alive and well, and his name is Philipp Meyer." Williamson also compared Meyer to Sinclair Lewis and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the print edition of his review.Īmerican Rust was released to general acclaim from book critics. Comparisons mostly include works by modernist writers: The Baltimore Sun compared it to Faulkner Roger Perkins of The Daily Telegraph, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, and Ron Charles of The Washington Post all compared it to the works of Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and J.D. Meyer's novel received positive reviews, and many publications ranked it one of the best novels of the year.Īmerican Rust was published in 2009 in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and The Netherlands (in Dutch) in 2010 it was published (in translation) in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, Greece, and Serbia.Īmerican Rust is a third person, stream-of-consciousness work influenced, according to Meyer, by writers such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Kelman. The novel focuses on the decline of the American middle class and well-paying manufacturing jobs, and the general sense of economic and social malaise. It is set in the 2000s, in the fictional town of Buell in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, which is in a rural region referred to as "the Valley" of dilapidated steel towns. American Rust is a novel by American writer Philipp Meyer, published in 2009.
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