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Wolf in White Van  By  cover art

Wolf in White Van

By: John Darnielle
Narrated by: John Darnielle
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Editorial reviews

“Quiet, mysterious, menacing, taking you places you will never, never get out of your head.” - Daniel Handler

Publisher's summary

Long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction

Winner of the 2015 Alex Award for adult books with special appeal for young adults

Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel Wolf in White Van is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.

Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.

Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.

Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean's life.

©2014 John Darnielle (P)2014 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“John Darnielle's amazing novel digs into an artist's unspoken fears . . . Like Darnielle's songwriting, the prose is often cryptic and then stunningly clear, microscopically specific and then audaciously grand. The words soothe for sentences at a time, then strike with blunt force.” —Carl Wilson, Slate

“A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt.” —Ethan Gilsdorf, The New York Times Book Review

“John Darnielle is a great songwriter, tipping light toward every kind of human suffering, and his powers are on full display in Wolf in White Van. The prose lives like Sean's imagination: a breathing, glowing thing. In Darnielle's novel, as in his songs, the monstrously true and unbelievably beautiful press up against one another. Together, they begin to dance.” —Carmen Maria Machado, NPR.org

What listeners say about Wolf in White Van

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    5 out of 5 stars

Breathtaking, expected and unexpected.

Full disclosure; The Mountain Goats are my favorite band and I've been a fan of John Darnielle's lyrics since 2005.

I knew this book would be special. I didn't know if it would be good. Songwriters aren't always able to take that step from lyricist to novelist. I was totally prepared for this to be some quirky little vanity thing that John put out and would have found merit in it just because, but holy God. This book is a stunning character study in frailty, innocence, loss of innocence, the sacred, the profane, the imperfection of family and just life. Read the synopsis yourself if you want to know the plot.

If you ever lived under a roof where the people who made you created their own narrative to believe about you because they can't understand your music, your books or your games. This book is for you.

If the inside of your head and the fantastic world and role you created for yourself there has always been more home to you than home. This book is for you.

If you don't know why you've hurt the way you've hurt for years or why you just seem to make it worse. This book is for you.

If you are looking for something that gives your answers or even clear cut questions, however, this book is NOT for you.

Whenever an author reads his or her own work, I'm always hesitant. Stephen King can spin a mean yarn, but hearing him read it aloud is like listening to a table saw read the bible. Neil Gaiman is a literary genius, but I literally want to put on PJs and drink warm milk when I hear him. John isn't like either. If you've ever seen The Mountain Goats in person, or heard John in interviews, you know he has a unique cadence and spins some words in odd directions pronunciation wise. Hearing him read this himself is comforting and unnerving at the same time. He knows just how this needs to hit you and hit you it does. I cannot recommend this haunting, beautiful thing enough. Get this. Now.

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12 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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amazingly frightening book

This book was totally gripping and mysterious and horrifying. It is really well written and I could not stop listening even though the trajectory was a downer of massive proportions. I cannot / will not spoil the book by blathering about the plot. It is good/great and worth a second listening and I don't every listen again. Read by the author and he was great. Too bad he isn't a regular reader.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Backward masking, PBM games, and suicide

Wolf in White Van refers to the cryptic phrases supposedly revealed by listening to records backwards, which those of us old enough to get all the pop culture references in this book will recall was one of the big moral panics incited by Christian evangelicals back in the 80s. In one of many scenes described by the first-person narrator, Sean, in this non-linear novel, he actually calls one of those evangelical stations, as a child, during their "prayer hour," to ask about this phenomena.

Of course, the astute reader will also realize that it's a clever reference to the book itself, since it starts at the end and unravels back to the beginning of what eventually lead Sean to the trial with which the book begins.

Sean created a play-by-mail game called Trace Italian, in which the players journey across a post-apocalyptic America searching for a mysterious location called Trace Italian. They send in their moves, and Sean selects a few boilerplate paragraphs from his files, customizes them a bit, and sends them back. It might seem very strange if you never played one of these games. I did play a lot of PBM games back in the 80s and 90s. They were a lot of fun. The Internet mostly killed the industry, of course (the more savvy PBM companies moved to email and web-based gaming), but as Sean tells us, even though he expected the Internet to kill his game as well, he retains a loyal following even into the 21st century, still sending in moves by old-fashioned snail mail. This makes Trace Italian a sort of cult phenomenon, which fits with the events in the book, in which Sean, mostly confined to a secluded existence thanks to a horrible disfigurement, briefly touches the lives of his players and gets glimpses, and more often, speculations, about their diverse outside lives, through the handful of sentences they exchange every couple of weeks in the medium of the game. It gives the entire book the same mysterious, opaque feeling as the game described within the book, in which it's never quite known what is going on, but everyone is drawn in trying to put the pieces together.

In the beginning, we learn that two teenage players of Sean's game tried to play it in real life, apparently convinced that the game was giving them clues to things they could find in the real world. This ended in a sad and tragic fashion, and the parents of one of the teens blamed Sean and sued him.

From there, we go backwards. We know initially only that Sean is terribly disfigured - his voice is difficult to understand, his face makes people look away. Eventually we learn how he became disfigured, but the details, the hows and whys and circumstances, are parceled out bit by bit as Sean continues moving back and forth, from his present existence as the creator of a strange little postal game that gives him a meager supplement to his income, to the events that caused teenaged Sean to become a lonely, disabled monster, events which are echoed in the lawsuit back in his present.

This is an odd, interesting, and clever book, and I'd like to have liked it more. I got all the references - the Conan novels, the science fiction magazines, the PBM games, the Moral Majority and their hysteria about Satanic messages in rock music - and I do appreciate clever and different novels.

But I'm not that impressed by "ambiguous" novels. I don't need everything spelled out for me - I am okay with the author leaving some questions unanswered. But in the end, I still had no understanding of what troubled Sean, what caused him to do what he did, what he was besides an angsty kid with a difficult relationship with his parents. Maybe that is all the author intended me to understand, and he built this short novel about a troubled kid on layers of self-referential narrative devices and cultural easter eggs to be unearthed like the mysteries in Trace Italian. It was an ambitious effort that didn't quite land for me, so I can only give it 3.5 stars, which I will round up to 4 because I'd probably try reading something by John Darnielle again.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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The labrynthine mind, viewed from above

What did you love best about Wolf in White Van?

I really thought Darnielle was able to tenderly and fully express ideas and frames of mind that I always believed were inexpressible. The book is effectively about the mind of a storyteller, and that gives it a metatextual quality I enjoyed a great deal, and it made that mode of creation more familiar to me than ever -- I am NO storyteller.

What did you like best about this story?

The engaging details that brought the world to life and the world-within-a-world of Trace Italian.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

Any additional comments?

Darnielle's narration was terrific, pleasurable and supple. He has the voice of a singer, not an actor, and treats the words accordingly, sometimes using breath to say much more than is on the page. I think he speeds up toward the end, which was a shame because I wanted to linger more in the book world.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Physical Emotional and Psychological Disfigurement

Wolf in White Van is a difficult, illuminating, stream of consciousness description of the inner life/thinking of a man-boy-teenager who has survived a suicidal attempt - perhaps. There are many questions that this man-boy-teenager asks himself as he narrates his thoughts and feelings in a non-linear series of pasts, futures, and presents.

The story takes place after the “accident”, this being a very unusual beginning or new beginning. The attempt in all its hideousness is so real and present for the man-boy-teenager throughout the story. It’s with him physically, mentally emotionally always. Has he really survived the attempt? There are many questions. Is he his own warrior or devil? Is he the wolf or is the wolf music or is the wolf the world he can’t quite navigate? Is the wolf spiritual or religious? How has his family, friends, community helped or hurt his chances of survival? With mental illness, a third survive, a third stay the same and a third get worse. Music, comic books, gaming and his imagination are all woven with bits and pieces of reality. So many lives are effected: gamers, parents, his friends, hospital staff.

I think the novel is brilliantly written though deeply sad and difficult to read like mental illness or genius. I’ve read that the author worked at one point in an adolescent facility. How many lost and lonely teenagers live with angst, anger, rage, hurt, helplessness, fear, powerlessness? The author has captured this rawness and pain. A painful and plausible story, I know, a thousand years ago (it seems) I survived a teenage suicide attempt.

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Lovely and disturbing

Any additional comments?

I love this little book so much that I'm nervous about recommending it to anyone. I get that it's not for everyone, but it totally worked for me.
Wolf in White Van is a series of disjointed small scenes filled with incredibly specific details. I was not a teenage boy in the 80s and I don't like role playing games, but I know some things about feeling isolated, and Darnielle captures that feeling beautifully. I enjoyed learning about the narrator's past and present through all the small, weird observations, but I didn't expect the ending to move me as strongly as it did. I loved the book even more the second time.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Good execution, but room for improvement.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, but with the caveat of not expecting the story to grow much. Its not unlikely that I missed some key connection in the book between the beginning and ending events, but the story seemed to wander and never really come to a head. Its pretty easy to guess what the traumatic event is after the first few chapters, and the build up of the event isn't very compelling. You just sort of see it coming, then it happens, and thats it.

Would you be willing to try another book from John Darnielle? Why or why not?

Yes because I think the story was an interesting idea, just executed in a way that didn't let it live up to its full potential.

Which character – as performed by John Darnielle – was your favorite?

Sean.

Do you think Wolf in White Van needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No. It was a well encapsulated series of events that feel complete.

Any additional comments?

Don't let this review discourage you from reading the book. It is worth the read, just don't try to build it up too much before you do.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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I liked it but I'm not entirely sure why

I read the author's 2nd novel (Universal Harvester) first. I almost didn't read/listen to that one because I generally can't stand fiction narrated by the author, but he was quite good. He's not as good here in his first novel (he reads a little fast, which is rare). But I got into the rhythm of his voice. I think that's one thing I did like--the rhythm. I suppose that's to be expected since I gather he's a singer/songwriter, though I've never listened to any of his music--just his books.

At any rate, I think most people either love this book or hate it. Those who love it have made some meaning of it and those who hate it thinks it makes no sense. I guess (being one of the few in the middle) I liked it because I didn't feel like I needed to understand exactly what point the author was trying to make. It was enough for me that the novel "worked."

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Better read

What disappointed you about Wolf in White Van?

A lot of things - mainly the fact that the slow moving narrative never caught up with the premise of the book. This should have been a ten hour story. interestingly enough it reminded me of an annotated southern reach book - another trilogy I didn't love.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Longer and more involved. Particularly the aspects relating to the game created by the main character.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

No memory here.

What character would you cut from Wolf in White Van?

None, I would have expanded and added depth.

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Confusing.

Man...I was looking forward to this book, but man was it a tough book to follow. Interesting at times but way to hard to follow.

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