Wolf in White Van: A Novel [J0069]

2015 - PB With minor wear. Winner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adults. Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to explore. As the creator of "Trace Italian"-a text-based role-playing game that's played through the mail-Sean guides subscribers through his intricately imagined terrain, turn by turn, as they search out sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America. But when Lance and Carrie, two teenaged seekers of the Trace, take their play outside the game, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, toward the beginning and the climax: the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, Wolf in White Van is "an indelible novel, a hymn for those who inhabit lonely universes, and a harbor for anyone who has sought refuge in a reality other than their own" (Patrick deWitt).

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "It's a very interesting read and one that's probably going to stick in the back of my mind for awhile."; "The story is cleverly told in reverse. We're thrown right into the life of a teen aged boy after surviving a traumatic injury which leaves him horribly disfigured. As a coping mechanism he creates an imaginary world and turns it into a to a play-by-mail game that funds his ability to ultimately live independently from his parents."; "There is something about Darnielle's novels that so unsettling yet feel normal and right, kinda like Springsteen's acoustic songs; and this book is no different. I'll be breaking this down and randomly thinking about it for a long time to come."