{"product_id":"universal-harvester-1","title":"Universal Harvester","description":"\u003ch1\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/h1\u003eJohn Darnielle\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003eFebruary 1 2017\u003cbr\u003eEAN: 9780374282103\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 0374282102\u003cbr\u003eSynopsis: \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eBestseller\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003emoving, beautifully etched\u003c\/b\u003e picture of America's lost and profoundly lonely. --Kazuo Ishiguro, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Remains of the Day\u003c\/i\u003e and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Brilliant\u003c\/b\u003e . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent;\u003cb\u003e it's nearly impossible to stop reading \u003c\/b\u003e. . . [\u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester \u003c\/i\u003eis] beyond worthwhile; it's a major work by an author who is quickly becoming \u003cb\u003eone of the brightest stars in American fiction\u003c\/b\u003e.\u003cb\u003e\"\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e--Michael Schaub, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eGrows in menace as the pages stack up\u003c\/b\u003e . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Joe Hill, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLife in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e. So begins \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/i\u003e, t\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ehe haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003eBestseller and National Book Award Nominee \u003ci\u003eWolf in White Van\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's a small town in the center of the state--the first \u003ci\u003ea \u003c\/i\u003ein Nevada pronounced \u003ci\u003eay\u003c\/i\u003e. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: it's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of \u003ci\u003eTargets\u003c\/i\u003e--an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store--she has an odd complaint: \"There's something on it,\" she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: \"There's another movie on this tape.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation--the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing-- but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/i\u003e, the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The novel will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. \u003cb\u003eA page-tuning homage to \u003ci\u003eIn Cold Blood \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Ring.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e--O: The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/i\u003e is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle . . . [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book's quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Abram Scharf, MTV News\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant's gift for looking beneath the surface.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Sam Sacks, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eUniversal Harvester\u003c\/i\u003e is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality.\" \u003cbr\u003e--Kevin Nguyen, GQ.com\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"27th Letter Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67391049269293,"sku":"20537","price":4.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/27thletterbooks.com\/products\/universal-harvester-1","provider":"27th Letter Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}