Train Dreams

Robert Grainier is a day labourer, and has been for as long as he can remember. It is the start of the twentieth century and the world is changing at a rapid place. Adrift following the loss of the family, Grainier struggles to make sense of this strange new land. He travels and takes refuge in hills and mountains, bearing witness to deportations and new discoveries. As his mind begins to deteriorate, Grainier dreams of his life past and present, an everyman, yet no man, living through extraordinary times. A short but sweeping novel that suffuses both the history and landscape of the American West, Train Dreams captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

About the Author :
DENIS JOHNSON was the author of six novels, three collections of poetry, and one book of reportage. His novel Tree of Smoke was the 2007 winner of the National Book Award. He died in 2017.

Review :
To have written something this concise, this muscular, this moving and - yes, why not say it? - this eternal, seems little short of miraculous. But we have come to expect miracles from Johnson. In this age of plodding bandwagons and slavish imitation, Johnson is a one-hundred-per-cent authentic American original and an undisputed master of his craft A masterpiece... one of the best prose writers in our time I don't think there is a sentence in the book that isn't perfectly made A work of extraordinary power and consummate skill ... It is a miniature novel, that delineates an epic yet ordinary life in passages of often startling descriptive power. A masterpiece Johnson might be one of America's greatest fiction writers... The denouement is written with such credibility that it fulfils the book's theme. Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high? One of America's greatest living fiction writers... Gently undulating and compelling... You can sit down and read it in one sitting - and you should A miraculously deft job... Beautifully done Train Dreams has the same riveting duality as its extraordinary, ordinary hero... artfully constructed and rich in parabolic [and] paranormal possibilities... Bewitching We hold Denis Johnson to be one of the greatest Americans currently writing... a work of absolute towering genius It will haunt me ever after... it resonates long and loud. The fact that this was on the shortlist for the Pulitzer Prize makes the jury's decision to withhold it all the more baffling. It should have won A spare stoic miniature of a particular sort of American life... a portrait of containment, of compression and restraint, from the most essential writer of his generation His writing is extraordinary - complex, beautiful, harrowing, astonishing in its power, and underpinned with a hard-worn humanity in the DNA of every sentence... exceptional on every level: ravaged, redemptive and utterly immersive. It is further evidence, if it were needed, of Johnson's unique and alchemical brilliance The great success of this work lies in its ability to move between vivid, muscular prose and hallucinatory poeticism - in many ways encapsulating all that is great about American literature. Train Dreams retains an authenticity and clarity... Beautifully proportioned The most powerful thing Johnson has ever written Picked by the New York Times as a Notable Book for 2011 and described as "a small masterpiece", this novella tells the tragic story of Robert West, a day labourer in the American West at the beginning of the 20th Century. The novella is 116 pages, but it is as rich, moving, and ambitious as any novel I read this year - and, because it is so compact, more powerful for it. It's a love story, a hermit's story... It's also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed Extraordinary... simple yet lyrical... There is a haunting, elegiac quality to Johnson's writing that perfectly fits with the subject matter, giving Train Dreams the feel of a modern fable The natural world of the American West is examined, logged and frequently transfigured An immaculate distillation of a certain style of American fiction... Johnson delivers in hauntingly economical prose This is a short, excellent book, with a poetic quality that makes it oddly gripping Astonishingly gripping... Awe-inspiring and heartbreaking, exciting and humbling, this is a recommended read What sets Train Dreams apart is a lucid wisdom, a sense of perspective, a warm sustaining familiarity in the same ballpark as Richard Ford's Canada... sharp and clean, brilliant and surprising Stark and terse... all told with Johnson's maverick approach to grammar and structure Johnson's writing is a joy The best [novel] I read this year... It's compulsive and, finally, unspeakably eerie This Pulitzer prize-winning author taps into a strain of Americana we find both familiar and appealing on this side of the pond It has the feel of a modern fable, and is unbelievably moving... Extraordinary You will have to keep stopping to recover from the assault of beauty, from the spare, clean prose that punches so far above its apparent weight, and from the tender perceptive description of a sad little life, which is not little at all. I do not understand why it is not everyone's favourite book of 2012... Extraordinary A concise yet epic slice of Americana of the unsweetened, affecting variety... Short it may be, forgettable it is not Its economy of language and force of emotion give Johnson's work a quick shot of intensity... Superb Superb Epic... Full of tenderness and wonder It's beautifully written - a miniature masterpiece The best book I read this year A beautifully balanced and lyrical novella in which an ordinary labourer [...] lives through some extraordinary times... An outstanding work Amazing Set in the American West at the start of the 20th century, this is the tale of a construction worker who, after losing his wife and daughter to a wildfire, lives as a recluse in the woods... It's a feat