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Float Me Away, Floodwaters
A pocketsize novel concerning modern farm living, wayward country punks, and the New Old West, Adam Gnade’s Float Me Away, Floodwaters is a documentation of life on the margins of society, in the places forgotten by the city—the honkytonks and interstate campgrounds, the ghosts of cattle-towns and the desolate strip-malls. It’s about ripping all the bullshit from your life and looking for things that make living worthwhile in the midst of poverty, political divisiveness, and a dying empire. “Float me away,� the story says, away from loss and defeat, toward “somewhere without prisons up the road and white supremacists in the holler and long, daunting winters and that hard prairie wind that kicks up in the morning and doesn’t quit all day.� Float Me Away, Floodwaters is an ode to survival and place, home and away �
“An incantation for the end times.� —Julia Eff, author of Don’t Piss Down My Back & Tell Me It’s Raining
“Gnade is the king of underground fiction. Every word is truth.� —Nathaniel Kennon Perkins, author of Wallop
“This book reads like a prayer that we can all somehow stay afloat in this country deluged with sadness and pain.� —Bart Schaneman, author of The Silence is the Noise
“An incantation for the end times.� —Julia Eff, author of Don’t Piss Down My Back & Tell Me It’s Raining
“Gnade is the king of underground fiction. Every word is truth.� —Nathaniel Kennon Perkins, author of Wallop
“This book reads like a prayer that we can all somehow stay afloat in this country deluged with sadness and pain.� —Bart Schaneman, author of The Silence is the Noise
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 2021
5 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Adam Gnade
23Ìýbooks134ÌýfollowersAdam Gnade’s (guh nah dee) work is released as a series of books and "talking songs" that share characters and themes; the fiction writing continuing plot-lines left open by the self-described “talking songsâ€� in an attempt to compile a vast, detailed, interconnected, personal history of contemporary American life. His books and "talking records" are released by Bread & Roses Press and Three One G.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 6, 2021
Adam hangs onto his love for others with a tenderness that borders on ferocious. The book is filled with highly detailed accounts of shared and individual intimacy. Divided by the seasons, the book considers time and place. It paints a portrait of Adam’s life in rural America. I love Adam’s books for how they feel like drinking beer with a friend, listening to them tell stories from the past while a favorite song plays in the background. Also, this book is beautifully designed. The photo copied invocation pages are like a cross between zines & prayer books. Beautiful.
December 16, 2020
Did not expect another Gnade barnstormer so quickly after his last novel. This serves almost as a small-but-mighty companion to This Is The End of Something But It's Not The End Of You, but delves so much deeper, sacrificing any plot or connective tissue for raw internality.
The story is told in short vignettes in Gnade's Faulkner-esque Bolaño-inspired style, describing a year or uncertainty for the protagonist and their homestead lifestyle.
In short, it was my favourite book of 2020. For a year where we've been all cut adrift by the powers that be, this was a great comfort to me. And I can imagine I'll recite the motifs and lines from this book like incantations for years to come.
Stay safe out there. Don't go nowhere.
The story is told in short vignettes in Gnade's Faulkner-esque Bolaño-inspired style, describing a year or uncertainty for the protagonist and their homestead lifestyle.
In short, it was my favourite book of 2020. For a year where we've been all cut adrift by the powers that be, this was a great comfort to me. And I can imagine I'll recite the motifs and lines from this book like incantations for years to come.
Stay safe out there. Don't go nowhere.
Read
January 18, 2023Adam’s stories include some of the most raw and real writing I’ve ever read. I wish there was a way that I could read with my eyes closed, because the detail in which he describes life and all it entails is insane. The structure and style of this particular novel(la) was new to me. I loved the vignettes into this character’s life and feeling the uncertainty he faces over the course of each season. Reading this felt like you were being told stories by a friend over a glass of beer, as another reviewer noted. I purchased basically all of Gnade’s books currently in print a few months back so I can’t wait to get into more of it.
January 15, 2023
I read After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different by Adam and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to read more of his work. After that novel, this little book fell flat. If I had more of a personal connection to the author, I might have gotten more out of it, but without that background, I didn't get a lot of meaning out of many of the reflections. Although, I loved the incantations as an ending. It felt more fresh and interesting than the now dated numbered essay format that the rest of the parts take. I wish some more of that cerebral experimentist expression was present throughout.
May 8, 2022
If Kerouac listened to cow punk. I was intrigued as soon as I found out three one g records had released multiple books by the same author. Definitely didn't let me down. At times meditative and at times destructive. The narrator muses on life working on the farm, or on a book tour with his friend drinking in dive bars, and love & loving those around you. Lots of little nuggets of wisdom spread throughout. Pocket sized and short with a beautiful nature-ish layout.
September 28, 2022
The book doesn't exactly shoot for the moon, but that's because it's very content to just wander around the earthen scape and wonder about the stars in each others eyes given from the heavens. It's a cute book, with a little darkness and a little prayer. It's a good book to bring friends together in the quietness of the zeitgeist. A tone poem of elegiac wit. Thank you Adam Gnade, have a cool and blessed one.
October 7, 2022
I can no longer remember why I had this book on my radar, but I'm so glad I picked it up. It was everything I hoped it would be. Viscerally sad and joyful. Not afraid to linger awhile in a bar, a season, in a landscape. Adam Gnade has a new lifelong reader.
September 8, 2022
A lovely semi-fiction travelogue that follows a multitude of characters around rural America's most surreal corners. A good introduction to Gnade's work.
January 7, 2023
Fantastic book to start a year with
March 1, 2023
As with everything Adam Gnade writes, this book took me on a full journey of the spectrum of human emotion, reminded me what hope feels like, and affirmed all the greatness and awfulness that I feel as a side effect of existing every day. There is something about this book (and again, Gnade's work in general) that makes me feel closer to humanity, myself, and my loved ones without anyone but me having to know about the renewed sense of connection and love.
January 12, 2023
This book reads like a prayer that we can all somehow stay afloat in this country deluged with sadness and pain.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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