Float Up, Sing Down

What a delight to spend a day with the inhabitants of Bright Creek, their longings and lusts, their memories. Laird Hunt writes so brilliantly about the quotidien - why a woman would leave a tin of paprika on a gravestone; why a boy would be devoted to this headband - and in doing so, he reveals so much else. Float Up, Sing Down is a shimmering, magical book. – Margot LiveseyAn entertaining work of exceptional vitality. * Kirkus Starred Review *An ingeniously structured depiction of small-town life in rural Indiana, Float Up, Sing Down dignifies the ordinary people at the center of its stories, illuminating their secrets and desires in gently comedic ways that manage, too, to pierce us. Reminiscent of Joan Silber’s work, this is a hopeful and poignant portrait of the intertwined lives that make a community. A miraculous puzzle of a collection. * Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back *One of Laird Hunt’s many gifts is his ability to transport readers to small towns filled with the most fascinating, yet ordinary, characters. He has done it again in this brilliant collection, which is skillfully linked by time and place. In the pages of Float Up, Sing Down, you’ll meet a retired farmer closely observing his neighbors while thinking back on war days, a woman who finds great comfort in spending time in a cornfield, and a host of other complex and memorable people. I love this book. * De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of DECENT PEOPLE and IN WEST MILLS *Hunt has mastered a style that feels both traditional and fresh. * Financial Times *An absolute delight … Brimming with easy-going charm, there’s real heart and hurt here, too, as Hunt unspools the hopes and dreams of his beguiling characters. * Daily Mail *Prize-winning material … If it is first-hand experience that gives his stories such authenticity, it is his literary skills that shape them so seamlessly into such an entertaining and rewarding collection. * Irish Examiner *Brimming with charm … an absolute delight * Daily Mail *The stories in Float Up, Sing Down are compassionate and universal. * TLS *Hunt’s trilogy is to Indiana what Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge novels are to Maine or Kent Haruf’s Plainsong trio is to Colorado. His stories remind us that everyone has hidden depths, if we would only stop and look. * Prospect *

Laird Hunt is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and two book-length translations from the French. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield–Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine, and Italy’s Bridge prize. His reviews and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.

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