Product Description

Fleeing Las Vegas and her abusive boyfriend, Allison Johnson moves to Reno, intent on making a new life for herself. Haunted by the mistakes of her past, and lacking any self-belief, her only comfort seems to come from the imaginary conversations she has with Paul Newman, and the characters he played. But as life crawls on and she finds work, small acts of kindness start to reveal themselves to her, and slowly the chance of a new life begins to emerge. Full of memorable characters and imbued with a beautiful sense of yearning, Northline is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America from a writer and musician whose work has been lauded as "mournful, understated, and proudly steeped in menthol smoke and bourbon" (New York Times Book Review).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #440794 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061456527
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Singer-novelist Vlautin's second novel (after The Motel Life) reads more like a movie treatment than a novel. Allison Johnson, 22, is a high school dropout with a destructive lifestyle (alcoholism, self-mutilation, vituperative boyfriend who knocks her up early in the novel); the only positive influence in Allison's life is her favorite actor, Paul Newman, who appears to her during traumatic moments. Their banal conversations center on Newman's movie roles and how they equip him to continually bail Allison out of her sorry situation. She takes his advice (get the hell out of Dodge, as they say, and most of all, kid, buck up) and moves from Las Vegas to Reno. But pregnant Allison's life isn't much better in Reno: the cycle of self-loathing continues, and even though Newman implores Allison to turn her life around, the damage is all but done. Much of the writing reads like stage direction, and the abbreviated chapters give the narrative a rushed, slapdash feel. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Willy Vlautin's Northline tells the story of Allison Johnson, a young, pregnant woman who leaves her abusive neo-Nazi boyfriend, goes to Reno, sells her baby and tries to get her life in order by working at a casino. She's a pathetic case, a blackout drunk who never does anything mean to anyone but gets taken advantage of frequently. Still, she meets a number of people who help her out, and she finally hooks up with a kindred soul, someone as hapless as she.

Vlautin's other characters are not high-rollers. They're Allison's sweaty apartment superintendent, a kindly truck-stop waitress, deformed casino nighthawks, a compassionate truck driver whose child has been killed, drunks, janitors and Mexican-hating skinheads. Like Dagoberto Gilb and Marc Watkins, Vlautin shows us people who, if they have jobs at all, do the dirty work, scratching out livings in the depths of society.

In an interview appended to Northline, Vlautin claims Steinbeck as his primary literary influence, and it shows. Like his mentor, Vlautin has no truck with subtleties, and his literary machinery often groans like a rusted Model T. For instance, when Vlautin senses that the reader needs to get into Allison's head, he provides her with a notepad so she can write confessional notes to herself (and us).

What redeems Vlautin's work is that his objective isn't to produce belles lettres, but to tell the stories of America's underclass, as he did in his first novel, The Motel Life. The brutal events that are so frequent for his characters are rendered with chilling nonchalance. When Allison is raped, beaten and left injured and handcuffed to her boyfriend's bed, Vlautin reports the facts as if they are just everyday occurrences. After Allison passes out drunk in a bathroom while having sex with her boyfriend, Vlautin writes, "He looked at her, at the blood again leaking, dripping from the cut. He saw the small pool of urine around her, and he kicked her. Just once, but as hard as he could, with his steel-toed boots. Kicked her in the leg, above the knee. Still she didn't move, so he reached down for her clothes and began dressing her."

That's the kind of life Allison lives. Willy Vlautin tells her story with unrelenting clarity, and although the novel ends with her at relative peace, the next day is likely to deliver another disaster. Northline serves as a reminder that America's beaten, broke and miserable are not necessarily morally bankrupt or clueless victims. They're just trying to get by on minimal resources, little education and a bit of hope.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Timorous, twentysomething Allison Johnson is pregnant. She didn’t complete high school and has worked as a waitress for several years. She often gets drunk and quickly passes out and then writes herself letters that shriek her lack of worth. But her biggest fear is of Jimmy Bodie, her abusive, budding-skinhead boyfriend. So she leaves Las Vegas and moves to Reno. She gives her son up for adoption, begins waitressing again, and has imaginary conversations with actor Paul Newman that help her carry on. Vlautin uses the same strikingly spare and simple prose in Northline that distinguised his critically acclaimed first novel, The Motel Life (2007). His essential subject, decent people enduring difficult lives, also remains the same, but here he takes a giant step in his growth as a novelist, plumbing much deeper into the emotional core of his characters. Northline recalls a dust-jacket blurb on an early edition of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: “Two hours to read, 20 years to forget.” --Thomas Gaughan

Customer Reviews

Characterization at its finest
I picked this book up last night knowing nothing about the author or the title. I read it in a matter of hours. Why? I could not put it down. Alison Johnson is a person you've known in your lifetime. A good person who continues to make mistakes. Yet in this novel you don't get angry with her, you are sad for her and begin to root for her to overcome her deep seeded issues. You hate when bad things happen to her and you rejoice at every good decision she makes.

This novel works because Mr. Vlautin allows you to "know" his characters in a way that makes you want to read. I read a lot of books, rarely do I come take the time to write a review, but this one's a winner.

My copy came with a novel soundtrack. Novel idea, one that I think will catch on perhaps. If we're lucky. The soundtrack has no lyrics, just chill music.

A powerful, quick, moving read
I picked this book up at a librarian convention a few months ago - the publisher had a booth and was giving out preview copies. It's not something I normally would have picked up as I'm more of a chick-lit kind of girl, but I thought I'd give it a whirl. It was well worth it, and I'm definitely a fan of Vlautin now, and will get his other books.

Allison Johnson is trapped in a really bad situation in life - she's 22, dropped out of high school, works as a waitress in a Las Vegas casino, has an abusive boyfriend, hurts herself, is an alcoholic, and writes notes to herself about what a horrible person she is.

The only thing keeping her going is her imaginary conversations with Paul Newman, who she has a major crush on (her mother and sister do, too).

Paul Newman gives her advice based on his movie roles, and begs her to turn her life around, stop hurting herself, and pull it together.

There were moments where I really wanted to shake her and get her to come to her senses. Other times, like when she got her own apartment and went shopping at the Salvation Army, I was really proud of her ability to take care of herself.

She meets a lot of really horrible people, but she also meets kindness and love, and the story, which runs the gamut of emotion, eventually ends on a hopeful note.

It is a really quick read - took me about 3 hours or so - and I definitely recommend it.

One woman's life.
With his second published novel Northline, Willy Vlautin proves that his first, The Motel Life, was no fluke. Both these books paint vivid pictures of society's outcasts as they struggle to survive in a world they find overwhelming.
Unlike The Motel Life, Northline is a third person narration and this time the protagonist is female. Allison Johnson, more often then not referred to simply as "the girl", lives in Nevada. Her problems are many: alcoholism, family dysfunction, abusive boyfriend, incomplete education and honest to God psychiatric illness. Using a series of vignettes, Vlautin succeeds in bringing realism to Allison's claustrophobic life.
This is a compelling novel which realistically tells of lives lived on the margins. For those unafraid of glimpsing society's hidden underbelly, Northline is a must read.

The limited edition CD of original instrumental music that came with the paperback proved to be a welcome bonus.