Dogs

In this raw and brilliant debut novel, C. Mallon traces the late teen years of Hal and his group of misfit friends, wrestlers who mainly smoke, drink, and take any drug available to ease their feelings of irrelevance and isolation. It’s set in the rough backwater of Carbon (which appears to be in Wyoming) in the days when cassette players were still in cars and “pine walls twitched virtual seafoam green-blue with the cathode ray light” of a tube set. Hal and his friends operate out of view from adult supervision even when the parents are nearby, as when his mom leaves an ashtray on a window ledge so the boys can smoke outside. They are reticent and disconnected, and they often engage in rough horseplay while hiding their real emotions. Hal, confused and possessed by violent outbursts (in the eighth grade, he punched a kid “so hard in the face that he had to travel out of state to get a corrective rhinoplasty”), struggles to connect with anyone, and holds close to sensitive friend Cody John. One night while the two are wasted on a mountain turnout above their town, Hal confesses the buried trauma that’s made him who he is, setting into motion a blur of events that leads to tragedy. It’s a thoroughly heartbreaking story, but Mallon’s moody and sinewy prose is the main event. This one hits hard. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Aug.)