Fondly: Two Novellas
by Colin Winnette
Fiction, Trade Paperback Original
ISBN 978-0-9840405-8-2
6 x 9 in./246 pages
Publication Date: August 6, 2013
**Voted one of the Best Books of 2013 by Daniel Levin Becker at Salon.com**
“It takes some audacity to print a cover like this, an audacity that is adeptly matched by the prose inside … Winnette helps you to look at the world like a recently exploded head—to see all the pieces separated out, while at the same time retaining the suggested shape of the whole.” – Rain Taxi (Fall 2013)
In two artfully crafted novellas, Colin Winnette offers a sly and sinister portrayal of lineage and loss, and the roles we all play in writing our own family history. Written in a seamless, entrancing style, Gainesville follows the twisted branches of a restless family tree in a small Texas town. As tragedy strikes each generation in increasingly skewed fashion, what remains is the relentless passage of time toward an eerily familiar pattern of violence.
In One Story, The Two Sisters is woven from an array of beautifully haunting short stories. It details the lives of two sisters, both cast as wildly imaginative entities, each more bizarre than the next. Winnette joyfully plays with life forms as he presents the sisters as (1) an olive at the bottom of a dirty martini; (2) Shel Silverstein; (3) transoceanic swimmers, and so on. The result is an entertaining, skillful meditation on art, love, family, the creative impulse, and what can and cannot be communicated in a single story, or a single life.
PRAISE FOR FONDLY
“These two incredible novellas combine the obscene splendor of Hunter S. Thompson with the beastly fantasy of The Brothers Grimm. Winnette’s spinning narratives will leave you white-knuckled, gasping, laughing uncomfortably and voraciously, and feeling a good bit more alive than when you started.”
– Alissa Nutting, author of TAMPA, and Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls
“Winnette moves in and out of plot as if to deny the very idea of plot, yet adores narratives so ardently he fills every space with a new tale or idea. It becomes a balancing act, a house of cards where each card is a story and each story has the same face, his own, which is also that of his minions. Let him be the historian of a young nation yet unseen.”
– Jesse Ball, author of The Curfew, The Village on Horseback, and Samedi the Deafness
“Winnette, like the best AM radio preachers, is able to make a story out of everything and nothing, and still make you believe. These startling, well-muscled novellas will take you places you didn’t even know existed and then leave you there to fend for yourself.”
– Brian Evenson, author of ten books of fiction and a three-time O. Henry Prize recipient
“Fondly has a refreshingly distinct vision and voice that, at times, left me breathless. Winnette doesn’t take any shortcuts. He pulls the reader into each character’s life without preamble. On a sentence level he’s playing with sharp hooks that embed the skin.”
– Ben Spivey, Heavy Feather Review
“Winnette’s novellas are two separate exercises in absurdism … Gainesville moves like a serial killer in a getaway car, like life and death on fast-forward … in contrast to In One Story, the Two Sisters … where the situations are an endless, whimsical adventure to read.”
– Christopher Allen, Metazen
“Winnette balances meaningful messages with great storytelling, which includes his tendency toward the fairy tale. He creates whole worlds and invites readers in to experience them, never letting readers remember the only way out of his world is to put the book down.”
– Melanie Page, JMWW
ADDITIONAL PEER PRAISE
“Keep your eye on this Colin Winnette. He’s a gifted stylist, and quite often a funny one.”
– Adam Levin, author of Hot Pink and The Instructions
“Colin Winnette was born in 1984, but he writes like he’s either lived from birth to death once before, or else is only an unaffected observer, born immutable to time.”
– Michael Davidson, author of Austin Nights
“Winnette communicates something that’s true … facets of our existence that have become as basic as sun up and sun down.”
– Kevin Morris, DBC|Reads
“What I love most … is Winnette’s poetic glimpse of our own oblivion, and how he arrives there variously with post-postmodern sensibility.”
– Joni Wallace, author of Blinking Ephemeral Valentine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colin Winnette is the author of two previous books: Revelation and Animal Collection. He lives in San Francisco.