Selected Books
Float Up, Sing Down
Feb 6, 2024 • 224 pp • ISBN: 9781639730100
Bloomsbury
‘lyrical…revelatory…an ecology of elusive connection and meaning.’ The New York Times review
‘…the apparently placid setting disguises a deep reservoir of feeling and lets Mr. Hunt enlarge on his depiction of haunted ordinariness.’ The Wall Street Journal review
‘Brimming with easy-going charm, there’s real heart and hurt here, too, as Hunt unspools the hopes and dreams of his beguiling characters… An absolute delight.’ The Daily Mail review
‘Hunt has mastered a style that feels both traditional and fresh.’
The Financial Times review
‘his focal range may be purposefully tight, but the stories in Float Up, Sing Down are compassionate and universal.’
The Times Literary Supplement review
‘Fans of Hunt’s previous small-town studies will appreciate these lovingly drawn portraits’
Publisher’s Weekly review
‘An entertaining work of exceptional vitality.’
Kirkus review
‘While the stories work as stand-alone pieces, they also form a beautiful whole. This is a loving portrait of small-town Middle America that resonates well beyond its borders’
Library Journal
‘the book provides an elegy for a lost generation, or maybe for all the elders still here, as overlooked as the Midwest itself’
Los Angeles Times review
This Wide Terraqueous World
March 21, 2023 • 176 pp • ISBN: 978-1-56689-667-2
Coffee House Press
“Laird Hunt’s This Wide Terraqueous World is a luminous gem of a book. Brimming with unexpected insights at every turn—whether visiting W. G. Sebald’s grave or Willa Cather’s Red Cloud or observing donkeys at a distance in China, Corsica, California—here is an account of a writer’s life in which verifiable truths and an unfettered imagination work together brilliantly. Acting as a kind of post-postmodern Virgil, Hunt takes us on a journey in which travelogue melds with philosophy, literary acumen informs cultural observation, and far-ranging memories are set free by an unusually prodigious curiosity about every large and little thing. A kaleidoscope of genre-defying essays that leaves the reader frankly awestruck, This Wide Terraqueous World is a book to celebrate and treasure.” —Bradford Morrow
Zorrie
February 9, 2021 • 176 pp • ISBN: 978-1-6355753-6-1
Bloomsbury
“This is not a just book you are holding in your hands; it is a life. Laird Hunt gives us here the portrait of a woman painted with the finest brush imaginable, while also rendering great historical shifts with bold single strokes. A poignant, unforgettable novel, Zorrie is Hunt at his best.” —Hernan Diaz
In the House in the Dark of the Woods
October 8, 2019 • 224 pp • ISBN: 978-0-3165158-0-1
Little, Brown
"[Hunt] has fashioned an edge of-the-seat experience more akin to watching a horror movie. Don't go in the cellar! Don't eat that pig meat! Darkness is everywhere. . . . So prepare yourself. This is a perfect book to read when you're safely tucked in your home, your back to the wall, while outside your door the wind rips the leaves from the trees and the woods grow dark.” —The New York Times
The Evening Road
November 7, 2017 • 228 pp • ISBN: 978-0-3163913-1-3
Little, Brown
“…a vivid, disturbing book…mature, accomplished, impressive…” —Hilary Mantel
Neverhome
May 19, 2015 • 272 pp • ISBN: 978-0-3163701-6-5
Little, Brown
A brilliant and breathtaking blaze of a novel…a slim and unshowy story of devastating power, an epic poem in its own vernacular, an upside-down Odyssey at once particular and hauntingly universal. —The Guardian
Kind One
September 25, 2012 • 192 pp • ISBN: 978-1-56689-311-4
Coffee House Press
“…as devastating a piece of writing as anything one is likely to find in contemporary literature.” —Contemporary Review of Fiction
The Exquisite
September 1, 2006 • 256 pp • ISBN: 978-1-56689-187-5
Coffee House Press
“Hunt's novels shimmer and shift like reflections on wind-stirred water… an edgy and labyrinthine tale of longing, madness, and death.” —Booklist
Indiana, Indiana
September 1, 2003 • 200 pp • ISBN: 978-1-56689-144-8
Coffee House Press
“Strange, original and utterly brilliant, Laird Hunt is one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today.” —Paul Auster