Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies
Weblink
www.mowalsh.com/

MY SUNSHINE AWAY

M.O. Walsh

"My Sunshine Away begins with a crime. But the novel is so much more than a mystery; it’s half lament, half love letter to youth and to possibility. On every page, we feel complicit, perhaps even guilty. Guilty of what? For ever having been young ourselves. The magic of My Sunshine Away is in M. O. Walsh’s extraordinary ability to make us long for the heartache of youth and its inevitable sins. This is an awe-inspiring debut." Hannah Pittard

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a city of neighborhood cookouts on sweltering summer afternoons, cauldrons of spicy crawfish and vats of cold beer, glorious crepe myrtle blossoms and passionate football fandom. But when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson—free spirit, track star, and belle of the block—is raped one summer night near her house, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of suburban Baton Rouge has a dark side, too. For such a small, close-knit block, the suspects are numerous. Among them are Bo Kern, the menacing figure who’s lurked about the neighborhood since finishing high school; Jason Landry, the delinquent from farther down the block; Jason’s foster father, Jacques Landry, a creepy psychologist; and even our sweet teenage narrator, whose obsessive infatuation with Lindy lands him on the list of suspects.

In MY SUNSHINE AWAY, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.

M.O. Walsh was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Epoch, and The Greensboro Review. His stories have been anthologized in Best New American Voices, Bar Stories, and Louisiana in Words. His collection, The Prospect of Magic (Livingston Press; 2010; unagented), was an Editor’s Pick for Best Books of 2010 by Oxford American. He currently teaches in the English department at the University of New Orleans.

Available products
Book Published 2015-02-01 by Amy Einhorn
Book Published 2015-02-01 by Amy Einhorn

Comments

I really loved this book. I am in awe, swept up in the quiet beauty of the prose, and in the wisdom and compassion of the narrator. I can't praise it enough. My Sunshine Away is not a thriller; it is not genre fiction; but it's realism at its finest, and it is a page turner—a story made memorable in paragraph after paragraph by the brilliance of its author, and by the scope of the questions he asks as to how we live this life to the fullest as loving and moral beings. It’s about love, obsession, and pain. Such a beautiful book. Such a remarkable book. I hope M.O. Walsh writes many more wonderful books.

If I were asked to list the qualities the ideal novel would offer, I’d start by demanding beautiful sentences. I’d want the opening to grab me and I’d want the ending to refuse to let go. I’d ask for characters who consistently surprise by being somehow deeper and less predictable than we could ever have guessed they’d be. I’d want Place to be written with a capital P. I’d want a mystery at the heart of the story, and a mystery or two in every heart. And when I finished reading the book, I’d want to be both wiser and sadder than when I started. M. O. Walsh’s magnificent novel My Sunshine Away afforded me all these pleasures and more. This is one of the best novels I’ve read in ages.

Interview Read more...

Walsh’s word-perfect rendering of the doubts, insecurities, bravado, and idealism teens deserves to be placed in the hands of readers of Tom Franklin, Hannah Pittard, and Jeffrey Eugenides.

My Sunshine Away is that rarest find, a page-turner you want to read slowly and a literary novel you can't look away from. At times funny, at times spine-tinglingly suspenseful and at times just flat-out wise, this novel is also a meditation on memory, how it can destroy or damn us but redeem us as well. It's a book to read and reread, one that will only get better with time, like its writer. I'm already excited about MO Walsh's next book, whatever it is.

My Sunshine Away," by M.O. Walsh. Remember that title. Remember that name. I just finished this novel, by a Louisiana writer who now lives and works in New Orleans. And I am quietly in awe.

Try and restrain yourself from flying through the pages of My Sunshine Away. Instead savor this lush Louisiana mystery that takes you back to what life tasted like at twelve, fourteen, sixteen. Not just Southern, but American in its vivid Baton Rouge colors and scents, treetops and grasses, it is the story of a brief violent tragedy that affects the next twenty years of a man’s life… The last page is as satisfying as the first. A mystery you cannot wait to solve.

If you start this novel, you will not put it down. My Sunshine Away is a riveting, suspenseful, page-turning mystery. It is also a wise, insightful, and beautifully written novel. This is an extraordinary debut.

This is literature of the highest order. Although the book snaps with the tautness of a thriller––and Walsh keeps the reader guessing until the end, as the best mystery writers do––My Sunshine Away also asks essential questions, like how much responsibility we have to each other, and whether we can we ever fully reassemble the pieces of broken lives. And while Walsh hints at answers, it’s his willingness to engage such ideas that makes My Sunshine Away an important work of fiction. We need more novelists with the guts and clarity of M.O. Walsh.

…[a] wrenching and wondrous coming-of-age tale. Walsh’s debut novel is mystery, a Louisiana mash note, and a deeply compassionate, clear-eyed take on the addled teen-boy mind.

In addition to its two weeks on the New York Times hardcover fiction extended bestseller list, the book has now spent three weeks on the Southern Independent Booksellers Association hardcover fiction bestseller list as well.

Unputdownable. Read more...

M.O. WALSH WRITES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE AS A FATHER IN TODAY’S NEW YORK TIMES. Read more...

From beginning to end, My Sunshine Away is full of wisdom, wit and wonder.

M.O. Walsh’s debut novel MY SUNSHINE AWAY has been selected for the Buzz Panel at this year’s Book Expo America. Read more...

Review (Grade A-) & The Must List–National (USA): This stunning and gracefully written debut is a total page-turner until the very end.

Q: When is it a thrill to feel gutted? A: When you start reading the book you hold in your hands. M. O. Walsh’s My Sunshine Away reminds us that art can be wrenching and a delight, that pain—if examined through wit, intimacy, and wisdom—can be a salve. This novel is great.

Television rights to Sony Television - to be developed as a TV series

I imagine that many children in South Louisiana have stories similar to this one, and when they grow up, they move out into the world and tell them," says the narrator of Walsh's debut novel, looking back on the floods, fires, mosquitoes, heat waves and psychopaths of his childhood. Probably so—but only a few can do it with the beauty, terror and wisdom found in these addictive pages…. you suck down the story like a cold beer on a hot Louisiana afternoon. Celebrate, fiction lovers: The gods of Southern gothic storytelling have inducted a junior member.

M.O. Walsh has written one of the best books I've read in a long while. An outstanding examination of the way that the past and the weight of our memories shape us, My Sunshine Away, thanks to Walsh’s verve and total control over the narrative, feels utterly original.

My Sunshine Away begins with a crime. But the novel is so much more than a mystery; it’s half lament, half love letter to youth and to possibility. On every page, we feel complicit, perhaps even guilty. Guilty of what? For ever having been young ourselves. The magic of My Sunshine Away is in M. O. Walsh’s extraordinary ability to make us long for the heartache of youth and its inevitable sins. This is an awe-inspiring debut.

British Commonwealth: Viking UK, Bulgarian: Millenium, Dutch: Ambo Anthos, French: Michel Lafon, Hebrew: Armchair, Hungarian: Alexandra, Italian: Garzanti, Korean: Invictus Media, Portuguese (Brazil): Intrinseca, Serbian: Laguna, Spanish: Tusquets, Turkish: Indigo

20.2.15: Thrilled to say that MY SUNSHINE AWAY will debut on the New York Times hardcover fiction extended bestseller list at #18 for the week of March 1! 26.2.15: MY SUNSHINE AWAY remains on the New York Times hardcover fiction extended bestseller list for a second week, at #19.

As a Baton Rouge native, Walsh gives the reader an intimate understanding of the place as if it were a beloved but misunderstood grandmother. Rarely does a new author display the skill to develop a page-turner with such a literary tone. Readers of both popular and literary fiction will get their fixes from this novel.