American Follies

Praise for American Follies

Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist
Big Other Book Award Finalist
Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection

“Provocative, funny and sobering.” —Washington Post

“Ragtime in a fever dream. . . . When you mix 19th-century racists, feminists, misogynists, freaks, and a flim-flam man, the spectacle that results might bear resemblance to the contemporary United States.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A thrilling, unnerving portrait of 19th-century America. . . . One part novel of ideas, one part madcap adventure.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Dark, carnivalesque. . . . American Follies features lavish period details and unsettling alternative world building, warping expectations and standing out for its rapier wit.” —Foreword Reviews

“Raucous, fantastical. . . . [An] imaginative exploration of late-19th-century America’s cultural tensions.” —Publishers Weekly

“Lock nimbly explores race, gender, and identity through a historical lens while displaying a joyous love of language.” —Booklist

“Superbly crafted. . . . Absorbing and memorable.” —Midwest Book Review

“Brings to life the two suffragists, Anthony and Stanton. . . . A thoroughly worthwhile read.” —Historical Novels Review

Select Praise for Norman Lock’s The American Novels Series

“Norman Lock has created a memorable portrait gallery of American subjects, in a succession of audaciously imagined, wonderfully original, and beautifully written novels unlike anything in our literature.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“Shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights.” —NPR

“Our national history and literature are Norman Lock’s playground in his dazzling series, The American Novels. . . . [His] supple, elegantly plain-spoken prose captures the generosity of the American spirit in addition to its moral failures, and his passionate engagement with our literary heritage evinces pride in its unique character.” —Washington Post

“Lock writes some of the most deceptively beautiful sentences in contemporary fiction. Beneath their clarity are layers of cultural and literary references, profound questions about loyalty, race, the possibility of social progress, and the nature of truth . . . to create something entirely new—an American fable of ideas.” —Shelf Awareness

“[A] consistently excellent series. . . . Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue.” —Booklist

On The Boy in His Winter

“[Lock] is one of the most interesting writers out there. This time, he re-imagines Huck Finn’s journeys, transporting the iconic character deep into America’s past—and future.” —Reader’s Digest

On American Meteor

“[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain’s spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock’s books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.” —Wall Street Journal

On The Port-Wine Stain

“Lock’s novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mütter] but with decadent fin de siècle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock’s story as [his novel’s narrator] is by Poe’s. . . . Echoes of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud’s theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction.” —New York Times Book Review

On A Fugitive in Walden Woods

“A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau’s time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. . . . This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day.” —Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling

On The Wreckage of Eden

“The lively passages of Emily [Dickinson’s]’s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.” —Publishers Weekly

On Feast Day of the Cannibals

“Lock does not merely imitate 19th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of [Herman] Melville.” —Gay & Lesbian Review

On Tooth of the Covenant

“Splendid. . . . Lock masters the interplay between nineteenth-century [Nathaniel] Hawthorne and his fictional surrogate, Isaac, as he travels through Puritan New England. The historical details are immersive and meticulous.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

On Voices in the Dead House

“Gripping. . . . The legacy of John Brown looms over both Alcott and Whitman [in] a haunting novel that offers candid portraits of literary legends.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

On The Ice Harp

“In The Ice Harp, Norman Lock deftly takes us into the polyphonic swirl of Emerson’s mind at the end of his life, inviting us to meet the man anew even as the philosopher fights to stop forgetting himself. Who will I be when the words are gone, the great thinker wonders, and how will I know what is right? I gladly asked myself these same impossible questions on every page of this remarkably empathetic and deeply moral novel.” —Matt Bell, author of Appleseed and Refuse to Be Done