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Viking marauders descend on a much-plundered island, hoping some mayhem will shake off the winter blahs. A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the print of a bare foot on the inside of his windshield doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl.

In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily try to reassemble themselves. His version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. Combining electric prose with savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a major debut, announcing a voice we have not heard before.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002LA09H6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (March 17, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 17, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1876 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 250 pages
Reviewer: Michael Lin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Beautiful prose, ugly people
Review: These stories portray the ugliness of life in a uniquely satisfying way. These characters are not noble or lofty in their pursuits, ways, or beliefs. They are real, ugly, harsh, and selfish, yet they are complex, sympathetic, and relatable. Their stories are not neat little capsules that fit nicely into orderly rows, they are sprawling and confusing, with dead ends and twists and turns through unexpected territory. You're never quite sure where you are, or where you're going, and when you get there, you're not sure what to make of the view. The stories are not satisfying in the conventional sense, but they leave you with that feeling of deep understanding that all great authors do, and the journey is eminently enjoyable, thanks to the startling beauty of Tower's prose.

Reviewer: BJ
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Wild Ride....
Review: "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" finally arrived to my door!I'd read the good reviews and kept seeing the book different places, my anticipation was building..Wells Tower can write, extremely well. His stories are very, very well written and leave you wanting to know more at the end.These stories are the kind most readers will either love or hate. The book consists of nine stories, with each story being around 18-30 pages long.Of the nine stories, I like all but two of them. "Wild America" was long and didn't really go anywhere and the title story "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" didn't blow me away, as it did to some reviewers it seems. The story was supposed to have alot of WOW factor, but I've read too many other graphic stories for that.My favorites were:RetreatDown Through the ValleyLeopardDoor In Your EyeThe great story "On the Show" has all the makings of a good novel and has a great cast of characters to go along with it.Overall, a very good collection and a great start for Wells Tower~

Reviewer: moviegoer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: If you like Flannery O'Connor
Review: I read "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" when it was first published, and have waiting impatiently, ever since--a long time, it feels like--waiting for anothervolume of stories or a novel to come from W.T. I am brought here by two unconnected things: first, I just finished reading two volumes of stories by George Saunders,whose new collection made the cover of a weekly magazine, I believe, and was highlighted on the cover of the NYT Book Review section, with the words,"The Best Book You'll Read All Year." Well, you know, I finished the two books, and though I thought they were good, they don't move me. The second thing thatbrings me here is the fact that I tossed a book (long listed for the Booker Prize last year) called "The Teleportation Accident" without finishing it.Together, these two unconnected reading experiences made me cast about for what I'd like to read again, since I have no new books left in my house. (Well, I do haveone or two, but they don't call to me, really, and so I'm ignoring them). So, long preamble over, I came to look up Wells Tower to see if he by chance had somethingcoming out. No dice. Then I glanced at the reviews, which are all over the place. Do you find, as I do, that often, when a book breaks readership into smithereens,there's often something really there? Whether it's Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections," or Ashley Judd's performance in the small film "Bug," the really interestingefforts explode among readers and create hugely varying reactions.Me, I loved Tower's book. It's been a year or two since I read the book, and I can't comment specifically on any individual story, but if you're passing by and areconsidering buying the book, oh, I hope my review will be the one that tilts you toward the purchase. If you're a serious reader of fiction, you will be pleased.

Reviewer: Natalie E. Ramm
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good, but not the BEST short-story collection
Review: I usually like short story collections a lot. Like a lot a lot. Especially when they have a running theme and are fitted together seamlessly like Dancing Girls (Atwood) or In Our Time (Hemingway) or Close Range (Proulx). So, I was a little disappointed by this collection. I've read a couple of Wells Tower`s stories in The New Yorker, and really enjoyed them. He equally balances the absurd and the sad without beating you over the head with depressing-ness (like Annie Proulx tends to do).I #lovelovelove the story "Leopard," which appears in the middle of the collection. I'd read it before in The New Yorker (You can read it here) and loved it then. It's about a little kid who fakes sick to stay home from school. His step dad-a royal bastard-knows he's faking it and makes him pick up the mail. The mailbox is quite a ways away since they live in the country and the kid has this inner monologue about how it's so unfair that his "almost a psychopath" step-dad would be so insensitive as to let his "sick" step-son walk half a mile to pick up the mail. Then he has this great idea of pretending to pass out on the road so his mom will find him there and feel really bad. Anyway, a police man shows up and everything gets SUPER tense. The whole story is this dramatic build-up. I kept thinking WHEN is the step-dad going to snap and attack the kid with that axe??The other story that I liked a lot was "Retreat" about two brothers that sort of hate each other, but it all seems to be because of one misunderstanding after another since childhood. The older brother buys some land out in the boonies and invites the younger one to come hangout with him. He's trying to get the younger one to invest in the property so that they can turn it for a profit. Then they kill a diseased moose, which is kind of a metaphor for their entire relationship.The other stories in the book share common themes of divorce, heart-break, retreat from society, and a desire to reconnect with nature. The stories all have male protagonists and just sort of end without obvious conclusion. They are simply slice-of-life and I LOVE that.Then, out of now where, the collection ends with "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned." It's set in a different time when people live in huts and tents and fight neighboring tribes. This story features a protagonist who is married and very much in love with his wife (the total opposite of any other character in the collection!). In the story, another man finds a woman to love and marry. All of a sudden we go from totally emotionally effed up men escaping relationships through retreat to emotionally stable men who are eager to return home to their wives and domestic life. Plus, it has a conclusive, reflective ending.Way to throw us off your scent Mr. Wells Tower!Anyway, this is a pretty good collection, but I thought the stories could have been more cohesive. I mean Proulx's Close Range will the depress the hell out of you, but at least she's consistent.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great book of somewhat quirky stories!

Reviewer: Michael Gallagher
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: a great collection of stories, I'm telling you, this fellow can write; he throws out characters who are as real and complex as anyone you'd meet on any given day...I was really impressed by these stories...at last a writer who's actually saying something & he does it by showing you it through his characters and themes; you come away feeling as though you felt something. Top class stories.

Reviewer: vi
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This writer's debut is a collection of short tales which whilst differing completely in the characters situations and motivations, all investigate the diversity of human emotion, whether this be the jealousy a young girl feels about her beautiful cousin or the abandonment of a man whose father suffers with extreme memory loss. Like the characters I too found myself quickly changing dispositions whilst reading this book; on one page I found myself laughing the next there was a deep sense of sorrow. Some of the decisions the characters make made me squirm with the feeling of impending doom. The personalities are drawn so deftly by Wells Tower making them thoroughly believable and like-able that when they make a stupid decision or find themselves swamped in danger the reader feels for them, worries for them and on many occasions laughs with them. The prose is beautiful, full of razor-sharp wit and human observation that makes for an highly enjoyable read.For the most part the stories are just the right length leaving you fulfilled but not bored and the difference in the characters also helps you to keep on reading. So, if you want slice of reality with a side-order of laughs and heart-ache, try this book. Also, if you enjoy this try these Rust and Bone and Knockemstiff Thank you.

Reviewer: Nuala
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Wells Towers's short stories are utterly brilliant. Disaffected, angry men get into often hilarious situations in their dealings with other people. I laughed out loud often reading this book. The last story - the title one - is very odd though and , to me, doesn't sit well in the book. However, HIGHLY recommended. I loved it overall.

Reviewer: Andy
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I am amazed how, with so few words, a small group of characters can be so convincingly brought to life in 3 dimensional detail. This is, I suppose, what fiction is meant for; you are escorted to another person's life for a short while, and then you leave.What a pity that the lives portrayed here are so bleak! These are people - mostly men, mostly modern, mostly middle-aged - whose lives have become stuck in a rut, usually of their own making, and out of which they are quite unable to extricate themselves. The events within each story track the characters' dreary reality downwards; sometimes a step, but more usually a notch.Two cover-reviewers found humour in these tales: I saw none.