blurbed on Electric Literature
“I will resist the urge to litter this blurb with exclamation points and heart icons, but I am calling this book right now for every Best Book of 2014 award. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about a novel, but after reading an early ARC of Above All Men, I can’t wait to hold the final copy in my hands. It’s a near-future, post-collapse story of a war veteran with PTSD struggling to keep his family together when oil runs out, communication stops, violence and drugs escalate, and Mother Nature fights back in epic Steinbeckian fashion. When a murder occurs that runs close to the heart, the lead protagonist flips his switch to revenge mode and brings out intense anger, discomfort, awe, and satisfaction in you that you never even knew you possessed. It’s not a comfortable read, but it’s a necessary one: a book that breathes new life into the reader. Conjure up that discomfort you had when you read The Road and you get an idea of the feeling of Above All Men. Shonkwiler strips the writing to the barest bones, but humming underneath each line is subtle poetry that will seed in you quietly, and his unique voice — a bastard love child of McCarthy, Hemingway, and Faulkner, mixed with entirely distinctive, rare skill of Shonkwiler’s own — will hurl you into a different world, right from page one. A world you’ll have a hard time coming back from.”
