Charles Holdefer
The Contractor
“Unsettling and timely...fine literary prose”
The Independent
“A compelling mix of thriller, psychodrama
and, yes, political commentary”
starred review, Booklist
“Powerful in its reach … resounds with
literary merit"
Library Journal
"Finely tuned...a valuable entry in the Gitmo
field"
Publishers' Weekly
More about The Contractor here
Back in the Game
"Holdefer develops a perfect level of
synergy between setting and character...
Quirky as they are heartbreaking,
Holdefer's characters come across as
nothing less than fully human in this loving
study of the relationship between people
and the places we call home."
Marc Schuster, author of The Grievers
NICE
"The darkest of comedies, a satiric parable"
Boston Globe
"Truly eccentric...well-earned humor and
poignant story"
Booklist
"NICE is a rollicking, smile-provoking read"
Arizona Daily Star
More about NICE here
Apology For Big Rod
review from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:
"Set in Chicago, this spare, funny first novel
is narrated by Judy Gass, the spirited
offshoot of a conservative heartland family.
Written after her uncle, Big Rod, dies in
disgrace in a local jail, this brief, carefully
colloquial apology remembers a man who
acted according to the belief that life is
fleeting and that happiness is the only
worthwhile pursuit and the only true
standard of morality. ...
Using earnest, often hilarious small-town
syntax, Holdefer tells the simple,
memorable tale of a man who lived life as if
he savored it and yet was indifferent to it, as
if it were wine in a beautiful glass that
would inevitably be broken."
Philip Larkin and the Poetics of
Resistance
(With Andrew McKeown, co-editor)
"A valuable contribution to the further
development of Larkin studies"
The European English Messenger
"Highly original"
Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad
Complutense
DESCRIPTION:
"I'm an agnostic," the British poet Philip
Larkin (1922-1985) used to say, "an
Anglican agnostic, of course."
This idiosyncratic unbelief that Philip Larkin
made his own in a distinguished writing
career spanning five decades is central
among the questions explored by the
thirteen specialists in this first
thematically-unified volume of Larkin
scholarship published in France.