Praise
The jazz scenes crackle with energy and authority...Coulson moves fluidly between the past and the present, and the novel is ultimately quiet, affecting and redemptive.
Will remind readers of classic authors like Steinbeck and Zola, or perhaps such contemporary masters of wounded male pride and self-doubt as Raymond Carver and Russell Banks.
An ambitious effort that heralds the arrival of an intriguing talent...Achieves the quiet beauty of William Maxwell's finest work—generous, episodic, elegiac but not sentimental...
A beautifully told story about family bonds, love, loss, and the power of memory over our lives.
Coulson's richly textured narrative abounds in passion and wonder...His real subject is not loss but the art of losing, the infinitely varied ways in which people try to live in the wake of loss.
Assured and purposeful...Coulson infuses each surprising and evocative moment with great feeling and mythic resonance...creating a somberly beautiful family saga.
A poignant look at working-class life...and the collision of personality with history.
Coulson brings to his narrative a...poet's respect for the integrity of words—where each word, in relationship to those next to it, is summoned to stand as one with the reality it is meant to describe...All this, applied to the characters, makes them so vascular and alive that if you were to cut into a page on which they appear, you would half expect the page to bleed.
Coulson is what we used to call (with apologies to the vegetarians) a meat and potatoes storyteller: clear, vivid, big-hearted. So many unheard voices speak and sing through his voice. Listen.
Like the best of the smoky, slow-burn [jazz], Of Song and Water unfolds with deceptively simple writing, the meaning and feeling building up almost unnoticed...the overall effect is like Coleman's music––understated, steady bass undercurrent, drum flourishes, and guitar work that, if you're only partway listening, seems competent enough, but when you give yourself up to the story, let it settle around you, can change the colors in the room.
Extras
- Hear Coulson discuss his first novel, The Vanishing Moon, on The Leonard Lopate Show.
- Explore Coulson’s website.
- Read the interview with Matthew Tiffany from the Condalmo litblog.