Pressestimmen
'American Rust is so timely that it makes painful as well as enjoyable reading. The novel is a paean to the end of empire…Mr Meyer's voice is assured, and the story crackles with narrative tension. He develops his characters with impressive psychological and sociological insight, observing astutely that "there was something particularly American" about "blaming yourself for bad luck - that resistance to seeing your life as affected by social forces, a tendency to attribute larger problems to individual behaviour." Meyer himself sees these larger forces all too clearly, and it is his portrayal of America's devastated industrial base that is likely to get this novel much attention: "You could not have a country, not this big, that didn't make things for itself. There would be ramifications eventually." The author delineates the inexorable welfare dependency, petty crime and drug and alcohol abuse that follow when the infrastructure of steady employment implodes. The picture is firm, but masterfully painted' (The Economist)
'Meyer has fused a molten story set among the defunct steel mills and deer-filled woods of a small Pennsylvania town… The entropic nature of a society in paralysis is stunningly portrayed in a novel rich in scope and ambition' (The Guardian)
Kurzbeschreibung
Set in a beautiful but dying Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises from its loss. It is the story of two young men bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia and the beauty around them who dream of a future beyond the factories, abandoned homes, and the polluted river. Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother commits suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother's trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac's leaving, something happens that changes the friends' fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendance, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.