PRAISE FOR CLEARCUT (ANCHOR
BOOKS, AUGUST 2005)
"Erotically daring...Stunning prose... Nina
Shengold's debut novel revisits the free love era with a fresh voice and an eye
for the tricky fragility of inner peace... Shengold does an amazing job."
-- Time Out New York
"A red-hot love triangle ... Bursting with period detail and
smoldering with sexual tension, Shengold's debut satisfies as both a beach
read and a literary novel. GRADE: A." -- Washington Post, Sunday
Source
"Shengold easily elevates it with her devotion to the souls -- and
not just the commingling body parts -- of her characters, as well as her
pungent language. B+." -- Entertainment Weekly
"Jules et Jim with hoedads." -- The Oregonian
"An entrancing debut novel... A powerful recreation of the place, the
time, the people, an affecting, surprising and sometimes even shocking tale that
seems destined for inclusion in future listings of cult favorite novels about
the Northwest... Clearcut resonates on the page and in the memory, with Earley
Ritter destined for enshrinement in the hall of Northwest fiction heroes."
-- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Erotically atmospheric ...Shengold has a keen
familiarity with this moist, woodsy region of the country, and the sexual
tension among the rough-and-ready lovers resonates thrillingly with the
landscape. ...Will appeal to young, bohemian readers mostly because of
Shengold’s sensitive, credible portraits of the two men, whose emotional
honesty allows them to overrule the strictures of a middle-class morality. A
nouveau hippie tale with boldness and spunk." – Kirkus Reviews
"A shaggy, steamy '70s menage a trois in a Pacific Northwest
logging town ... Shengold's characters are richly three-dimensional, and
plenty of authentic era detail makes for a ripping read." --
Publishers Weekly
"This sumptuously intelligent, emotional debut novel by playwright
and screenwriter Nina Shengold plunges us into the gritty, grimy world of
hardscrabble loggers in the Pacific Northwest. The setting, rendered in
stunning detail, may seem an unlikely one for a romantic triangle, but the
book's vivid characters win our attention and hearts." -- Aaron
Hamburger, Out magazine
"A beautiful, romantic,
alive book... Woven together with a storyteller’s grace and the great grand
character of Earley Ritter, with whom every reader will fall in love."
–Amy Bloom, author of Love Invents Us and Come To Me
"A stunning book, one of the
best literary novels I have come across in a long time. Shengold’s prose is
fluent like a river, and her characters are sharp as knives in this beautiful love story."
–Da Chen, author of Colors of the Mountain
"A complex love story
with unexpected turns and switchbacks. The trio of characters at the center of Clearcut
is tough and unforgettable. We follow them eagerly into the forest of human
feelings. Clearcut is a novel of grit and a great heart."
–John Griesemer, author of Signal & Noise and No One Thinks of
Greenland
"This great, raw novel
takes the reader on a wild backroads tour of the hidden lives of treeplanters
and shake-rats. Shengold’s pungent prose seizes the reader from the get-go,
and never relinquishes its muscular grip. Clearcut is a completely
original novel that captures a time and place with sensuous, sharply observed
writing. It evokes the innocence and danger of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.
Stunning."
–Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements and Beautiful
Bodies
"Clearcut takes
the reader on a tour of life on the fringe in the forests of the Pacific
Northwest, circa the 1970s... It’s a wild ride, in a ‘58 GMC pickup with one
headlight, careening down a rutted mountain road, hilarious one minute and
tragic the next. Shengold captures the sorrow and loss that are the constant
companions of bliss."
–Rebecca Stowe, author of The Shadow of Desire
"Clearcut is a
vivid and wrenching story that captures the dark side of desire and gives a new
twist to the classic ‘love triangle.’ Its setting, the foggy backwoods and
raunchy bars of the Pacific Northwest in the ‘70s, and its compassionate
depiction of broken lives won’t quickly be forgotten."
–Laurie Alberts, author of Fault Line and Tempting Fate
