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A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN

Adrianne Harun

The seductive and chilling debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of THE KING OF LIMBO takes place in a tiny isolated town in British Columbia, where the Devil walks down Main street!-- and into the lives of everyone in the town.

We follow five teenagers and their families, whose lives demonstrate both human frailty and unflagging courage and love -- all alongside a murder plot, local “fairy tales,” a little Leonard Cohen, and rumors of local young women being abducted by an unknown evil force. Our narrator is 17-year-old Leo Kreutzer who lives with his mother and his dying uncle, who is ostensibly taking an incomprehensible on-line summer physics course that is always above his head, while monitoring the comings and goings of his friends during this one memorable summer, when they all do battle with these forces of visible, roaming evil. Adrianne Harun’s first book, The King of Limbo was a Sewanee Writers’ Series selection (Overlook Press; Houghton Mifflin Mariner) and a Washington State Book Award finalist. Stories in that collection won awards from Story magazine and the Chicago Tribune (Nelson Algren Award). Since then, she’s published stories in anthologies and in magazines like Narrative, The Sun, Ontario Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Several of those stories have been listed as notable in Best American Short Stories 2011 and Best American Mystery Stories 2003, and a short story collection manuscript, Lost in the War of the Beautiful Lads, was chosen by Jhumpa Lahiri as the runner-up for the Associated Writing Programs’ (AWP) Grace Paley Award 2011. Adrianne is a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. She teaches in two low residency MFA programs – the Sewanee School of Letters at Sewanee, the University of the South and the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Adrianne lives in Port Townsend, Washington, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, where she also manages a garage, Motorsport, with her husband, Alistair Scovil.

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Book Published 2014-03-01 by Viking

Comments

Dark, mysterious…[and] by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute, and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere.

Among Harun’s bountiful accomplishments is her depiction of the dirt-poor with honesty, not pity.

Harun’s mastery clearly lies in establishing atmosphere and mood. Much as it does to the novel’s characters, the gothic ambiance wraps around the reader and won’t let go. Laced with local color, this debut will please fans of the macabre.

An exploration of evils both supernatural and temporal…Harun creates a masterfully bleak and spooky mood, and succinctly captures the desperation of the young people’s lives.

In mesmerizing prose, debut novelist Harun spins a chilling tale shot through with both aching realism and age-old folktales, melding them together to capture a landscape lush with possibility and imagination and terrifying in its vast emptiness.

Harun finds beauty in pitch black; she makes poetry out of brutality and grace out of terror. She is an alchemist, turning the worst aspects of life into gold. One of the many troubled characters from the novel describes it best. Marcus, one of the harassing brothers who chase Leo earlier in the book, wanders down the town’s main street, drunk and high from the “faintly sulfurous” smell of the town’s new members. He looks up at the stars in the expansive Canadian sky and says, “What an enormous world this night was.” Despite all of its depravation and mystery, what an enormous world this novel was. Read more...

Booklist names A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN by Adrianne Harun to its list of the Top SF, Fantasy, and Horror of 2014! Read more...

Adrianne Harun’s auspicious debut novel [is] an ingenious blend of desolation and a strange kind of hope, told in rich prose with more than a trace of myth and magical realism thrown in…This volatile mix of characters and the book’s deeply atmospheric story are for the most part slow and measured, but a chilling climax brings it all together with one violent blow…Harun’s confident voice is a pleasure to encounter.

A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN

A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN proves that Harun is heir apparent to Louise Erdrich and Harry Crews. Her characters shimmer and squirm in liminal space, nether regions of geography, race, spirituality and aesthetics. This novel is a mesmerizing incantation, harrowing and hypnotic.

A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN is literary magic of the highest order…It reads with the level care of a finely crafted story…but also with the fresh familiarity of a folksong…A spectacular read.

A MAN CAME OUT OF A DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN by Adrianne Harun has been shortlisted for Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award! Read more...