A History of Hands
240 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:12 Feb 2014
ISBN:9781625340962
A History of Hands
A Novel
By Rod Moore and Rod Val Moore
SERIES:
Juniper Prize for Fiction
University of Massachusetts Press
This powerful novel begins with the ambiguities of illness and moves on to explore both the reasonable and the absurd actions of those who suffer and those who exploit suffering. The setting is a failed farm on the Central California coast during a time of rural isolation and decline. Virge, the protagonist, is an awkwardly introspective young man living with his parents, suffering from lingering effects of an accidental childhood poisoning, including a lack of coordination and the possibility of mental weakness. Within the first few pages, Virge trips, falls, and finds that his hands have become paralyzed—a potential disaster for someone unable to afford a doctor's visit.
Soon, however, an elderly and possibly criminal doctor, offering free therapy, moves in, much to the dismay of bedridden Virge. While the physician endeavors to restore the patient's hands with a series of highly suspect injections, Virge recovers his sense of autonomy and an urge to escape the suffocating domestic circumstances that have perhaps caused his illnesses in the first place.
A History of Hands is a novel that invites the reader into a richly and eccentrically detailed world where fevered imaginations and dark comedy prevail, but where the determination to escape the ambiguities of illness leads to the equal ambiguities of health and freedom.
Soon, however, an elderly and possibly criminal doctor, offering free therapy, moves in, much to the dismay of bedridden Virge. While the physician endeavors to restore the patient's hands with a series of highly suspect injections, Virge recovers his sense of autonomy and an urge to escape the suffocating domestic circumstances that have perhaps caused his illnesses in the first place.
A History of Hands is a novel that invites the reader into a richly and eccentrically detailed world where fevered imaginations and dark comedy prevail, but where the determination to escape the ambiguities of illness leads to the equal ambiguities of health and freedom.
This sad, odd, thrilling novel is unlike anything I've ever read. It is peopled by the vulnerable—frail bodies, wild minds—individuals with great lasting power who are capable of surprising tenderness and the quiet, surpassing cruelties of home.'—Noy Holland, contest judge and author of Swim for the Little One First
'In a world not so far or long away, but every bit as distant as if it were another universe, A History of Hands imagines Depression-era California as it has never been imagined before. Here, Rod Val Moore takes up the grotesque tradition of Nathaniel West to turn his eye toward California's sparsely populated Central Coast, where drifters, charlatans, and earnest naïfs cross paths to transform forever the life of one isolated boy with troublesome hands. But what really sets this book apart is the knock-dead gorgeous writing which, like the characters and landscape it depicts, seems almost to come from another world–one that shares uncanny parallels with our own and that refracts them back at us with something between the microscopic precision of science and the skewed eloquence of translation. A History of Hands is a miracle tonic all its own, and you will not want to miss it.'—Katharine Haake, author of The Time of Quarantine
'Rod Val Moore's A History of Hands is a paralytically funny run through the labyrinths of ontology, consciousness, imagination, illness, family, plight; like Omensetter's Luck meets The Simpsons, only Bart is paralyzed. A History of Hands quirks and hurts, successfully rising precariously above pathos through humor and philosophy, where the protagonist/victim Virge, alluding to Virgil, lies on the verge with his family, on the cusps of cruelty, affection, antagonism, and love. On top of that, the language is thick and layered and fabulous, it sucks you in and blows you out like prana, like breath. This is a novel of subtlety, complexity, humor, and wonder.'—Chuck Rosenthal, author of Loop's Progress and West of Eden
'Imagine a collaboration between Henry Roth, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Rudolph Wurlitzer . . . only less derivative than that description suggests, more antic, and uniquely poignant.'—Entropy Magazine
Rod Val Moore's story collection Igloo among Palms won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 1994. His novel Brittle Star will be published in 2015. He has taught English in Puerto Rico and on the Mexico-California border and is currently a professor of literature and linguistics at Valley College in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, the artist Lisa Bloomfield.
