Guidebook

With Guidebook, John Gallaher invents an idiosyncratic mythology of small town America in which driveways yield to carnivals, interstates wind their ways to to the edges of cliffs, and circuses erect themselves in backyards. Gallaher lights homes with refrigerators, clouds forecasts, and signs divorce decrees, puppeteering the lives of a gargantuan everyperson cast as he explores equal amounts of wishes and disappointments. Reading like a novelization of a Fellini film by Sherwood Anderson, Guidebook mixes genres, dizzies itself in language, politely makes meta, and affirms Gallaher as one of the most perceptive, poignant, and surreal minds participating in America's contemporary literature.