Grouse County is a curious place but a familiar one to the readers of The New Yorker, which published eleven consecutive chapters of this brilliant new novel. Tom Drury writes about modern life in the American Midwest with deadpan humor and unsparing affection that have captured the imaginations of readers from Miami to Sacramento. At the heart of The End of Vandalism we find an unforgettable triangle: Dan Norman, the county sheriff whose empathy exceeds his love of law enforcement; Tiny Darling, a part-time thief who smashes up a "dance against vandalism"; and Louise Darling, the woman forced to choose between them, although the choice is not that hard. Tiny loses Louise, Louise loses her sense of self, and the three find themselves on an epic journey through the beauty and sadness of contemporary life. Meanwhile, a remarkable array of supporting characters move to center stage with grace. And seasons change, quietly - and sometimes loudly - affecting the people of Grouse County. The End of Vandalism marks the debut of an exceptional American writer.

The End of Vandalism

Literature & Fiction

Drury, Tom.

United States

Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence

Paul Emmons has his faults - envy, lust, naivete, money laundering, and art forgery among them. A fallen accountant, exiled abroad, he has led a life that inspires courtroom debate over the distinction between "immoral" and "amoral." But it's when he returns to New England, the region of his crimes, that real trouble begins. Paul's singular resources will be vividly tested by a phantom swimmer, a disappearing river, and gangsters torn between vengeance and art appreciation.

The Black Brook

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Everyone in Hunts in Dreams wants something without knowing quite how to get it. Charles Darling covets an heirloom shotgun and will break the law, if necessary, to retrieve it. Joan Gower is drifting away from her marriage to Charles, hoping to reclaim an imaginative life. Their young son, Micah, prowls an empty town at night, testing the scope and reliability of his world. And Joan's daughter Lyris, after sixteen years as an orphan, seeks only a stable footing from which to begin the "perilous journey to adulthood." Sometimes together, sometimes independently, father, mother, son, and daughter move through a series of vivid encounters that demonstrate how even the most provisional family can endure in its own particular way.

Hunts in Dreams

"It was a dry, dusty summer day in New Hampshire. Paul and Mary Emmons were having lunch in a diner called Happy's when Mary happened to notice a dog in a car in the parking lot with his head turned upside down." Thus begins the strange and captivating saga of Paul Nash, a.k.a. Paul Emmons, a fallen accountant whose inadvisable return to New England, the region of his crimes, sets the stage for this darkly comic novel of love, death, guilt, redemption, and the various forms of clam chowder. More than a dog's head gets turned upside down in the course of Paul's transatlantic misadventures. Through it all Paul strives to find and accomplish his mission in life, and myriad characters contrive to tell their stories -- of unkept promises, nightmarish evenings, identities lost and found.

Mariner Books

A thief vacuums the church before stealing the chalice....A lonely woman paints her toenails in a drafty farmhouse....A sleepless man watches his restless bride scatter their bills beneath the stars....Welcome to Grouse County.... "Tom Drury's loving, wryly intelligent take on Grouse County is at once sophisticated and compassionate. Drury's prose is quietly heartbreaking, laugh-out-loud funny, and always, absolutely convincing. The End of Vandalism marks the beginning of a distinguished American career." --Jayne Anne Phillips "Remarkable...Every so often a debut novel appears that simply stuns you with the elegance and beauty of its writing....A+" --Entertainment Weekly "So amiably dense with anecdote and observation, the reader is bounced along by its energy....Grouse County is unabashedly American, a setting both nostalgic and wittily contemporary....In a sense, the main character is the county itself, with its eccentricities, rituals, quarrels and comforts." --The Boston Sunday Globe "Brilliant, wonderfully funny...It's hard to think of any novel--let alone a first novel--in which you can hear the people so well. This is indeed deadpan humor, and Tom Drury is its master." --Annie Dillard "Rich and readable...[Drury] possesses his made-up world with the same authority Sherwood Anderson brought to Winesburg, Ohio, and Faulkner to Yoknapatawpha County....The many characters who walk their separate paths end up weaving each other inside a mysterious pattern, in which they themselves are also caught." --USA Today Chosen by New York magazine and Publishers Weekly as ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 1994

End of Vandalism: A Novel

Ballantine Books

In this "perceptive and captivating" (New York Times) novel, Tom Drury returns to the quiet Midwest to spend an action-packed October weekend in the lives of a precarious family whose members all want something without knowing how to get it: for Charles, an heirloom shotgun he will do anything to obtain; for his wife, Joan, the imaginative life she once knew; for their young son, Micah, a knowledge of the scope and reliability of his world, gained by prowling the empty town at night; and for Joan's daughter, Lyris, a stable footing from which to begin to grow up. Sometimes together, sometimes independently, father, mother, son, and daughter move through a series of vivid encounters that demonstrate how even the most provisional family can endure in its own particular way.

Contemporary

BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY. 1994

In a triumphant return to the characters that launched his career two decades ago, Tom Drury travels back to Grouse County, the setting of his landmark debut, The End of Vandalism. Drury’s depictions of the stark beauty of the Midwest and the futility of American wanderlust have earned him comparisons to Raymond Carver, Sherwood Anderson, and Paul Auster. When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who deserted him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. He does new drugs with new people, falls in love with an enchanting but troubled equestrienne named Charlotte, and gets thrown out of school over the activities of a club called the New Luddites. Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meetsincluding Micah’s half-sister, Lyris, who still fights fears of abandonment after a childhood in foster care, and his father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger’s identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and everyday, unfold in both the country and the city.

Pacific

GROVE PRESS

Reading Pacific makes me once again fall in love with Drury’s words, and his perception of a world that is full of dangers and passions and mysteries and graces.”Yiyun Li In Pacific, Tom Drury revisits the community of Grouse County, the setting of his landmark debut, The End of Vandalism. When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who abandoned him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meetsincluding Micah’s half-sister, Lyris, and his father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger’s identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and quotidian, unfold in both the country and the city.

An utterly original and compelling novel from one of our living masters (McSweeney’s), originally published in 1998 and now re-issued by Grove with a new introduction--a conversation between the author and Daniel Handler. Paul Emmons has his faultsenvy, lust, naiveté, money laundering, and art forgery to name but a few. A fallen accountant and scamster, Emmons and wife Mary are exiled abroad, though they enjoy frequent and inadvisable returns to New England, the region of his crimes, to check in on the property they own but cannot claim. With this, the stage is set for Drury's darkly comic novel of love, death, guilt, redemption, and the various forms of clam chowder. Through a series of flashbacks and bizarre encounters, we see Paul's life as a college student in Quebec; his unfortunate professional beginnings in Rhode Island as business associate of Carlo Record, the one-armed president of the fraudulent company "New England Amusements"; and his stint as an investigative journalist. As time passes, Paul is tracked down by Carlo's cronies--Ashtray Bob, Line-Item Vito, and Hatpin Henry--who try to coerce Paul into stealing the infamous John Singer Sargant painting "The Black Brook" from the Tate gallery in London. Instead, Paul begs Mary, a painter, to reproduce the Sargant, in an attempt to outwit Carlo and his henchmen; a plot that produces comic consequences. Through it all Paul strives to find and accomplish his mission in life, and myriad characters contrive to tell their storiesof broken promises, nightmarish evenings, and identities lost and found in this "irresistibly droll portrayal of an All-American liar, loser, and innocent" (Kirkus).

Literary

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Books by Drury, Tom.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Drury, Tom.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The End of Vandalism

The Black Brook

Hunts in Dreams

The Black Brook

End of Vandalism: A Novel

Hunts in Dreams

The End of Vandalism

Pacific

Pacific

The Black Brook