Letting Loose the Hounds

Reviews

"Exhilarating or chilling… Udall’s stories can be as funny as they are dark." — Jim Shepard, The New York Times Book Review

"Bittersweet....memorable....Udall breathes fresh life into tales of the modern West." — Library Journal

"Funny, unpredictable, and abounding with strange beauty." — Outside Magazine

"Udall’s West emerges as a place of passion and despair without the mythic overtones of gunslingers and Marlboro men. It is a place filled with as much laughter as tears, and a place that I hope we hear from again quite soon." — Michael A. Elliott, Boston Book Review

"An irresistible performance." — Judith Freeman, author of Red Water

"One of the top writers of his generation.… Brady Udall’s stories, full of comedy and pain and trouble, carry a mighty kick." — Thom Jones, author of The Pugilist at Rest

"Brady Udall works with a whole lot of grace and an exquisite eye for detail. His characters find redemption in the utterly surprising places we suspected it lurked all along." — Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness

"There is a wonderful innocence in Udall's narrative voice, a risk and edge to these stories that make for delightful reading.… Letting Loose the Hounds has a great deal of meat to it, nothing sliced thin and served on a bed of watercress.… Always under the surface, there is a raised eyebrow, a bit of laughter, and the wildness of a writer who understands his backyard and plays by his own rules." — Jeff Metcalf, Bloomsbury Review

"A gritty debut.… Udall articulates the sorrow and humor of his characters' situations so well that their bellowing displays of bravado provide a catharsis." — Publishers Weekly

"Brady Udall must have a wild and lonely heart. Nothing scares him, not emptiness or fallen hopes or silence, not the unsparing and fractured geography out there in the new American West." — John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little

"Anybody who is very funny and writes, with love and a full heart, about goats, Whoppers, plastic deer, Mormons basketball, and nervous system disorders has got what it takes. Brady Udall has got what it takes, and thank goodness it doesn't break his heart to give it away." — Clyde Edgerton, author of The Bible Salesman

"Individually, Brady Udall's stories are exciting, hilarious, gripping, and usually a bit sad. Collectively, they make a work of great power, one that illuminates the usually darkened corners of the male character." — Pinckney Benedict, author of Dogs of God