Press for Lean on Pete

So far the critics have been kind…

‘As one boy’s journey, Lean on Pete is as real as blood: as a novel it is remarkable. Willy Vlautin, romantic and realist, has written something special that will make you shudder, weep, rage and wonder at how such things happen and do, and how some individuals such as Charley can suffer them, absorb the grief, and somehow survive. How good is contemporary US fiction? This good: catch your breath good.’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

‘Lean on Pete confirms his status as one of the most emotionally charged writers in America … Spare, dry, ingenuous, his prose is quickly compelling … Vlautin’s characters, memorable however curtailed their cameos might be, become a sketchbook of America … It’s a dark tale, lit with sporadic flashes of redeeming brilliance, told with aching compassion. There’s music in the stark writing, the urban clamour or Portland giving way to the keening twang of the open spaces. The band has to be a hobby now. Vlautin is a writer.’ Sunday Herald ‘Lean On Pete is an archetypal American novel, Huck Finn for the crystal-meth generation. If there’s the occasional touch of sentimentality, it’s hard-earned and welcome. This is a sad, often brutal, but oddly beautiful portrait of an America that’s forgotten only because we choose not to remember its continuing existence.’ Independent