The Formalist Fiction Writer
American Book Review of The Goodbye House
D. Star Costello’s review of The Goodbye House appeared in the January-February issue of American Book Review. “The Goodbye House is a novel that strips away the gloss of the American Dream and reveals the everyday people struggling underneath.”
Southeast Review Interview
I spoke about novels, novellas, teaching, and the season of significance with Misha Rai of Southeast Review.
Camp Olvido named one of the best novellas of 2015
“There are some books when, after you finish them, leave you breathless, quiet, and thoughtful. Camp Olvido stunned me into silence. I sat there with this universe in my hand for the longest time.”
Camp Olvido was named one of the best novellas of 2015 by David Abrams at The Quivering Pen. The list included Mesilla, by Robert James Russell, and On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World, by Elizabeth Kadetsky.
Mid-American Review on “Camp Olvido”
In its most recent issue, Mid-American Review said this of Camp Olvido: “In taut vibrant prose, [he] weaves together the desperation, monotony, and violence of a 1930s labor camp in California.”
Midwest Book Review of “Camp Olvido”
Midwest Book Review featured Camp Olvido in its December Bookwatch. “A fully absorbing novella by a true master of the storytelling arts, Camp Olvido by novelist Lawrence Coates is a highly recommended and deftly crafted literary work that will linger in the mind and memory long after it is finished and set back upon the shelf.”
University of Utah’s Reading Room
The University of Utah’s Alumni Connection featured Camp Olvido in their Reading Room feature.
In the California heartland in 1932, at a migrant labor camp whose very name means “forgotten,” a child’s sudden illness leads to tensions between workers wishing to break camp and the land barons enforcing their contracts. Into this dispute, Esteban Alas—contrabandista and self-styled businessman—is reluctantly drawn as a mediator, until an act of violence forces him into a more tragic role.
Small Press Distribution List of Recommended Books
I was very pleased to see that Small Press Distribution chose my novella, Camp Olvido, as one of their recommended books this month.
Top Fall Indie Fiction Pick from Library Journal
Library Journal wrote of Camp Olvido: This starkly beautiful work delivers a sense of entrapment most of us can barely imagine.
Article/Review in the Sentinel Tribune
Frances Brent, of the Sentinel – Tribune, calls The Goodbye House a winner.
“Like its predecessors the setting (of The Goodbye House) is California’s ever redefined Santa Clara Valley. Once orchards and vineyards thrived. The farmland is now the Silicon Valley of modern mythology with technology the failing or bumper crop. In 2003 its citizens are enduring the melancholy of 9/11 and the dot com collapse. It is an era of lowered expectations. The mood is nostalgic – not sentimental. The past is recognized, honored, unmourned. Coates’ achievement – a universal, at times comic, modern family tale weaving time and setting into action.”
Sentinel – Tribune, October 28, 2015
Zoom News
“A novel both of homecoming and leave-taking, The Goodbye House, with its blue-and-white clouds cover, illuminates with a generous spirit the life of a family and a region during a time of change.”
Zoom News, September 24, 2015
About Lawrence
Lawrence Coates is the author of five books, most recently The Goodbye House. His work has been recognized with the Western States Book Award in Fiction, the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, the Miami University Press Novella Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University.