What Is Time to a Pig?
John Straley
ISBN: 9781641290845
Published: February 4, 2020
Pricing
Hardcover $26.95
More books by John Straley
Description
In the not-so-distant future in Cold, Storage, Alaska, a man is kidnapped from prison and placed in a drug-induced haze. Why? To find a missing nuclear bomb.
It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Kore...
In the not-so-distant future in Cold, Storage, Alaska, a man is kidnapped from prison and placed in a drug-induced haze. Why? To find a missing nuclear bomb.
It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past.
Then one day, an old family friend grabs Gloomy from his off-site work station and smuggles him away in a hollow tree trunk. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy finds himself coming unmoored—he feels he belongs in prison for the unspeakable wrongs he has committed. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden and demand to know where it is before it detonates. The clock is ticking, and Gloomy knows he needs to find the missing warhead fast, or his wife, his friends, the entire town of Cold Storage may be obliterated. The only problem is he has no idea where it is.
As Gloomy struggles to escape, the memories he fought hard to repress begin to creep out from the strange corners of his mind, first in rivulets, then in waves. In a drug-induced haze, Gloomy makes a discovery that may just bring him the closure he desires—if it doesn’t kill him first.
Media
“John Straley creates a maddeningly insane but wholly convincing universe that fires powerfully on the level of plot. But What Is Time to a Pig? does much more. It manages to skillfully ask questions about the nature of reality, memory, and dream while speculating on what may become of our addiction to incarcerating our fellow brothers and sisters. The result is the best kind of intellectual head trip.”
—Sergio de la Pava, author of A Naked Singularity and Lost Empress
“John Straley is a masterful storyteller, and one of America's finest novelists. In What Is Time to a Pig? Straley captures an American society of dysfunction and a corrections system run amok, a not so distant future that we can only hope we never see. Straley delivers humor and heart with a hard punch to the gut. His quirky characters live and breathe on the page with such life and force you feel like you’re in the room with them. I can’t answer the question of What is time to pig?—but I can say the time I spent devouring Straley’s new Cold Storage novel was the best reading experience I’ve had all year.”
—Don Rearden, author of the Washington Post notable novel The Raven’s Gift
“This is one of those books where the writing is so dazzling the story almost doesn’t matter, but the story is wonderful too: a satirical 21st century thriller that’s both a page-turner and the frame for a much deeper contemplation. Straley’s prose is achingly perceptive, cinematically vivid and just pure pleasure to read.”
—Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char, on
“When a master writer like John Straley comes at you with a book as funny, biting, intelligent, gritty, and propulsive as What Is Time to a Pig?, you can’t help but sit up and take notice. Upon a foundation of nuclear proliferation, the Ghost Dance movement, the history and future of Alaska, and the philosophical ramifications of individual freedom, Straley has built a narrative as absurd as anything in today's news cycle, and all told in his signature voice: warm, inviting, sharp, witty, and impossible to turn away from.”
—Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms
“Straley strikes the perfect balance of humor and pathos in this story about the McCahon brothers. ”
—New York Times Book Review, for Cold Storage, Alaska
“[Straley] writes crime novels populated by perpetrators whose hearts are filled with more poetry than evil. ”
—The Wall Street Journal, on Cold Storage, Alaska
“Straley isn’t prolific, but when he does publish a book it’s a gem . . . The crime aspect of Cold Storage, Alaska is pretty casual. Straley’s mostly interested in his characters and how they interact on a personal level . . . It’s always a pleasure to read Straley’s vivid studies of these folks—the slightly cracked, rugged and very funny characters of the Far North.”
—The Seattle Times, on Cold Storage, Alaska
“Thoroughly enjoyable and slightly wacko . . . Dashes of magical realism mixed with ironic humor reminiscent of the Coen brothers and violence worthy of Quentin Tarantino make this second series novel a winner. Compelling characters and deft treatment of themes like redemption and the power of community take it to a level beyond. ”
—The Boston Globe, for Cold Storage, Alaska
“Lesser writers look to their characters’ poor choices and attempts to rectify them, John Straley loves his characters for just those choices. Hölderlin wrote: 'Poetically man dwells on the earth.' Some of us wind up in limericks, some in heroic couplets. But damned near every one of us, sooner or later, ends up in one of Straley’s wise, wayward, wonderfully unhinged novels.”
—James Sallis, for Cold Storage, Alaska
“What a warm, engaging, profoundly human book this is: its skin crackling, its heart enormous and open. It's a mystery with judicious blasts of violence and dread, but it opens also onto the bigger mysteries—of community, of family, of place. The several lives that intertwine throughout the story reach moments of quiet grace that resonate stealthily but deeply. ”