Wyoming

A subtle, impeccably rendered new novel from one of America's most distinctive writers.A woman and her young son are traveling together by car through the southern and midwestern United States in the mid-to-late 1950s. As the mother drives, she and the boy, Roy, talk about their lives, their disappointments, and their dreams. "Wyoming" exists as a state of mind rather than an actual place, a place neither the boy nor his mother have ever been, an idyll where the two of them can live an untroubled life. Told entirely in dialogue, the story of Roy and his mother traverses both real and imaginary states of being, on a tour through an uncertain but hopeful landscape of longing and myth. As Roy's mother tells him, "Everybody needs Wyoming."Combining a spare and elegant style with profound and clear-eyed feeling, Wyoming is the most sensitive and touching work of Barry Gifford's brilliant career.

From Publisher's Weekly

Prolific novelist (Wild at Heart) and screenwriter (Lost Highway) Gifford

delivers a sedate story written almost entirely in meandering dialogue between a

mother and her precocious nine-year-old son, Roy. The book takes place in the

mid-1950s as Kitty and Roy drive across the American South and Midwest.

Traveling from place to place, rarely leaving the car, they try to pass time in

idle, soft-focus banter about their hopes and disappointments, occasionally

musing about such big topics as fate, personal loss, divorce, death and the

soul. The background unfolds: Kitty has left Roy's dishonest father, whose

health is failing, while Roy craves reassurances that both parents still love

him. But content mirrors form in that, just as the two never arrive at any final

destination, their desultory conversations rarely resolve issues or discover

anything new; and the novel's brief, episodic chapters ensure that no subject is

dealt with profoundly or in full. Action is generally light (a train passes, a

road curves, a hotel room is dirty), but even when more dramatic events happen

(i.e., Roy's father takes a turn for the worse), the voices of mother and son

are sometimes indistinguishable and their reminiscences and longings are so

vague and personal as to be irrelevant. The pair seem lost, both on their

journey and in lax, unremarkable conversation, leaving the reader to wonder why

Gifford won't give them a bit more gas, a few more twists in the road and, above

all, some direction. Line drawings by Gifford throughout.