The Sarah Book is Scott McClanahan's semi-autobiographical novel about love and loss in contemporary West Virginia. The Sarah Book is as humorous as it is sad, as tragic as it is hopeful, and as redeeming as it is damned. Through McClanahan's unique Appalachian vision, we watch a young couple fall in love, begin their life together and then fall apart as the marriage breaks down. The story is told all with the purple mountains and Wal-Marts of modern life in Appalachia as the backdrop. McClanahan weaves the telling of his life through a mix of language akin to the Romantic poets and country twang that is unforgettable.
"So memorable, so powerful." – Roxane Gay
“Scott McClanahan writes like Walt Whitman and Barry Hannah had a love child who grew up addicted to speed and porn and The History Channel. I’ve never read anything with so much wide-armed, grief-stricken love inside descriptions of strip clubs and drug deals and excrement and road kill and drunkenness and child neglect. I feel like there’s almost no way to describe the book, it’s so packed—like McClanahan flung his arms open and gathered all the objects and people and emotions in his world, then compressed them into three-hundred thousand tiny quivering black marks, each one ready to explode with the slightest touch. I can’t come up with a single adjective to capture the multiplicity of emotions I experienced as a reader, so I’ll just say that The Sarah Book is a crazy heartbreaking surprising sad delicious desperate horrifying hilarious ride.” – Jamie Quatro
About the Author
Scott McClanahan is the author of Hill William, Crapalachia, The Incantations of Daniel Johnson and many more. He lives in West Virginia.
"McClanahan's prose is miasmic, dizzying, repetitive. A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. He writes in an elliptical fever dream so contagious that slowing down is not an option. It would be like putting a doorstop in front of a speeding train. This is not a book you savor. It is one you inhale." -The New York Times