The Shelter Cycle

Reviews

“A stunning novel about faith and disillusionment and the lingering power of the past. In spare, lyrical prose, and with immense compassion, Peter Rock illuminates a strange and little-known chapter in American religious history. At times, Rock’s uncanny ability to combine mysticism with blunt realism is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor.”

“Rock further demonstrates his literary finesse with this intense novel about two people who grew up with a spiritual clan bracing for the apocalypse…Steeped in foreboding grimness, the real beauty in Rock’s narrative lies not in the carefully revealed secrets, but in the curious humanity within each of them.”

“A metaphysically haunting, shape-shifting novel that keeps the reader off balance and can’t be fully appreciated until its climax…The novel becomes indelibly unsettling as it progresses.”

“Like Rock's last title, My Abandonment, this quietly assured new work deals with people on society's edge…A sure, thoughtful read.”

“The Shelter Cycle is an engaging and quite strange mixture of reality and magic. Interestingly, its straightforward style and emotionally numb characters make it almost seem like a case study, but one that is expertly imagined, eminently readable, and inarguably haunting.”

“Pete Rock is not a normal novelist—he simply refuses to tell a story that is predictable or that permits us to put it aside…Certain writers are so unnervingly original their work secedes from our shared world and makes up a world of its own. With The Shelter Cycle it’s clear that Pete Rock’s world is the most singular and wondrous of them all.”

“As luminous as it is sinister and innocent, The Shelter Cycle is a book not quite like any other. Peter Rock renders masterfully the ferocity and intensity of bonds between childhood friends as well as adults, coupling also the inescapable loneliness and yet hope within the human soul.”

“Peter Rock is marvelous at revealing both the insightful strangeness and the madness erring on the outskirts of civilization, and at showing with great sympathy how quickly we can slip from one to the other. A wonderfully humane book about the weirdnesses that make up people’s pasts and the way they persist into the present.”

“Pete Rock has done it again. The Shelter Cycle is a beautifully crafted, beautifully felt novel. Rock’s rendering of place is, as usual, flawless. He knows terrain so well, both geographical and human, where we hide and where we can be found. The writing is fierce, smart, and moving. This is the real deal.”

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