Get em Young, Treat em Tough, Tell ..., Robin McLean
Get em Young, Treat em Tough, Tell ..., Robin McLean
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Get 'em Young, Treat 'em Tough, Tell 'em Nothing

Author: Robin McLean

Narrator: Dion Graham, Sophie Amoss

Unabridged: 7 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2022

Categories: Fiction, Noir, Short Stories

Synopsis

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean’s reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States.Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life.Here you’ll find stolen children living life to the fullest on the run and on the road, soldiers guarding empty frontiers, and rugged individualists brought low by an uncaring nature. You’ll find prehistoric beasts rubbing talons with hustlers, as well as death machines lurking beneath the bucolic countryside. Here you’ll find hatred, friendship, and pitch-black humor all seething in the same stew.Get ’em Young, Treat ’em Tough, Tell ’em Nothing marries the sardonic moral and political explorations of a Flannery O’Connor to the surreal, scuzzy wit of a Denis Johnson. It is a brazen State of the Union for a nation on the edge.

About Robin McLean

Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her debut novel, Pity the Beast, was chosen in multiple Best Books of 2021 lists in outlets such as The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and White Review, while the American Booksellers Association chose it as an Indie Next pick. She teaches writing across the US and internationally, and currently lives in the high desert West.

About Dion Graham

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Edward

Uh, did I read the same stunning short story collection that you folks did? Because I'm completely puzzled by the hostile reviews here. McLean's prose is taut and muscular, reminiscent of Brad Watson at his finest. The atmosphere here feels Southern, similar to the rugged feel of Cormac McCarthy, bu......more

Goodreads review by Paul

Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada They aimed pistol fingers out the window at setbacks, at drunk Indians. “I don’t give a shit about Mexicans,” she said. “But Injue Joe was here first.” “We were stronger,” they said. She stood with a spatula over the couch. Moose roast......more

Goodreads review by Alan

Just read 3 stories in the bath: this is going to be a five star book! ...just brilliant, more, more... I slowed down to one a day, and re-read ones from the day before. With this, her second collection,* Robin McLean has become my favourite American storyteller, along with Joy Williams and Lorrie Moo......more

Goodreads review by Jon

When James Ellroy released AMERICAN TABLOID, I thought it his grand summation, his final statement as a crime writer, and thereafter he'd have the confidence, freedom, and drive to apply his hard-edged style and attitude to whatever subject warmed his heart. Well, it turned out crime was the only sub......more

Quotes

“Grotesque, comic, and unsettling.” The Guardian (London)

“Graham and Amoss capture the dreamlike aspects of the stories and transform them into engrossing performances. Characters crackle with life, while the unusual elements of the stories…sound both real and unreal.” AudioFile

“In Robin McLean’s stories, life is tough but so are the living…Everyone here is on the edge of some kind of cliff, and McLean unsentimentally renders their various precipices with incredible energy and humor.” New York Times

“Sharp, noirish, thought-provoking stories of lives out of joint.” Kirkus Reviews

“Offers up a gritty and well-honed collection of mischief, desperation, and disaster in the American West…with merciless prose and a bold vision.” Publishers Weekly

“No writer casts a sharper light on the feral edges of the human condition than Robin McLean.” John Larison, author of Whiskey When We’re Dry

“These tales are so surprisingly original, so strange and moving, so funny, so irreverent, I swallowed them, I ate them whole.” Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8

“Not since Jesus’ Son have I read a book of stories that so resonated in my soul. McLean’s prose sings with a fierceness that is ornate and sparse, spiritual and secular, peaceful and violent.” Christian Kiefer, author of The Animals

Awards

  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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