Awards
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2010 Powell's Staff Top 5s
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2011 Oregon Book Award for Fiction
2011 Oregon Book Award - Readers' Choice
Staff Pick
There was a moment two-thirds of the way through
this book when I said, “Oh no!” out loud. And I don’t do that kind of thing.
This book broke my heart and then pieced it back together. The quiet language
of the narrator trying to make sense of every hard circumstance, the characters
he runs across, the humanity of it all. Beautiful. Recommended By Doug C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete and a photograph of his only known relative. In an increasingly desperate circumstance, Charley will head east, hoping to find his aunt who had once lived a thousand miles away in Wyoming — but the journey to find her will be a perilous one.
In Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete, he reveals the lives and choices of American youth like Charley Thompson who were failed by those meant to protect them and who were never allowed the chance to just be a kid.
Review
"Vlautin transforms what might have been a weepy, unbelievable TV-movie of a novel into a tough-and-tender account of a boy, a big-hearted horse, and a mostly unforgiving world....Unforgettable." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Spare and straightforward....There is intensity in Vlautin's narration, and also beauty and power....But Vlautin's major accomplishment lies in posing a damning question: How could we, as a society, have allowed this to happen?" Seattle Times
Review
"Vlautin won me over. He's so much more than cool. I don't care if he hangs out at the racetrack. I care about whether he delivers. And in Lean on Pete, he most certainly does. His prose is strong, his storytelling is honest, and he sticks to it scene by scene. By the time Lean on Pete reaches its sweet but unsentimental end, Charley Thompson isn't a character in a novel, but a boy readers have come to love." Cheryl Strayed, The Oregonian (Read the entire )
Synopsis
Willy Vlautin's award-winning novel Lean on Pete, a moving and compassionate story about a fifteen-year old-boy's unlikely connection to a failing racehorse as he struggles to find a place to call home--now a major motion picture from A24, the studio behind Moonlight and Lady Bird, starring Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, and directed by Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Looking).
Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete and a photograph of his only known relative. In an increasingly desperate circumstance, Charley will head east, hoping to find his aunt who had once lived a thousand miles away in Wyoming--but the journey to find her will be a perilous one.
In Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin reveals the lives and choices of American youth like Charley Thompson who were failed by those meant to protect them and who were never allowed the chance to just be a kid.
"Lean on Pete riveted me. Reading it, I was heartbroken and moved; enthralled and convinced. This is serious American literature."
--Cheryl Strayed, Oregonian
Synopsis
"[Vlautin] unearths a world Steinbeck would have recognised...where the American underclass still resides. Lean On Pete is an archetypal American novel, Huck Finn for the crystal-meth generation."
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Independent ExtraAuthor Willy Vlautin—“a major realist talent”(Seattle Post Intelligencer) who is often compared to Raymond Carver, John Steinbeck, and Denis Johnson—returns with Lean on Pete, the story of a 15-year old boy struggling to make his way to a long lost aunt, who just might give him a home. In the words of author Mark Billingham, “Vlautin is a truly original voice.… [and] one of the best writers in America,” and “Lean on Pete is powerful, heartbreaking stuff.”
Video
About the Author
Willy Vlautin is the author of The Motel Life and Northline, and the singer and songwriter of the band Richmond Fontaine.