Early Sobrieties

Reviews

Michael Deagler is the real deal. This novel is surprising in all the best ways. The actions of the complex and complicated people in this world are not predictable, but always, frighteningly, believable. Deagler writes with great control and understatement. This is a truly intelligent work from a clearly intelligent writer Illuminating and moving—Deagler’s debut pulls in a reader with such an inviting clarity. There’s something about the honesty in this voice that creates a lot of room for the reader to connect, imagine, and feel Superb . . . Deagler is very good. His prose is conversational and vivid; his characters talk and act like real people, in constantly surprising and plausible ways; and everything that happens, no matter how low-key or incidental to the plot, has the detailed intricacy of ordinary life All we have is Monk's peripatetic wanderings and the pleasure of his voice, which is consistently funny and wise . . . There's a sense of dislocation or dissociation in this recovering addict's observations, which Deagler perfectly articulates . . . What makes the novel cohere, and what makes it such a pleasure, is Monk's stream-clear voice and his growing insight into his condition. This is a funny, sad but – first of all – incredibly soulful novel. It offers an unflinching account of the life which has to be lived in the aftermath of a change of heart. Here is a narrator who is clear-eyed and yet sun-dazzled; born again but as an actual newborn. It will literally make you laugh and it will literally make you cry. Expand reviews