That Old Ace in the Hole (Hardcover)

'This eagerly awaited sucessor [to The Shipping News] has the same richly textured quality as all the author's finest work. The beleagured Bob is one of the author's finest creations, and the use of idiomatic dialogue here is perfectly judged.' Publishing News On THE SHIPPING NEWS: 'To read The Shipping News is to yearn to be sitting in The Flying Squid Lunchstop, eating Seal Fin Curry, watching the icebergs clink together in the bay.' The Times On CLOSE RANGE: 'Seismic ... A brilliant writer at the height of her powers ... Wickedly funny' Sunday Telegraph 'Proulx's command of the raw idiom of rodeo-riders and cowhands is astonishing; it gives her the power to summon up entire lives within a few paragraphs.' Esquire

One of the great delights of Annie Proulx is her talent for digging beneath the surface of an American landscape and its inhabitants and emerging - triumphantly - with a fistful of dirty gems. However unpromising or downright unappealing her choice of canvas might appear to be at first glance, she always has the knack of unearthing its social, cultural and moral riches. And never more so with this work, in which the wasted vistas of the Texas panhandle form the setting for a slow-building but deep-burning drama of a community's battle to maintain the integrity of its heritage in a swiftly globalising world. Bob Dollar, recruited as an undercover site scout for the multi-national conglomerate Gobal Pork Rind, has the task of targeting land-owners whose property might be suitable for conversion into hog-farms. He takes a room in the teetotal town of Woolbucket, where he soon finds himself more interested in hearing stories about the town's eccentric inhabitants, past and present, than in paving the way for money deals with its intransigent old-timers. Bob clearly isn't cut out for the job, and within weeks his cover is blown. But by then the dreary panhandle landscape and its people have taken a grip on him, making his role as champion of the globalised `pork unit' increasingly untenable. This is crowded, fact-strewn, celebratory fiction, rich with raucous, spot-on dialogue and unbridled humour. So peopled is it with characters, that for a while, one almost loses sight of the mild, well-meaning Bob Dollar. But with breath-taking craft, Proulx brings him back, and at the same time gives every minor character a role in the story's final blossoming, making its narrative conclusion one of the most richly satisfying, as well as the most optimistic, that she has ever orchestrated. Life-affirming stuff. Liz Jensen is the author of War Crimes for the Home. (Kirkus UK)

A kind of Rake's Progress set in the Texas panhandle, where a slick Denver hustler goes to fleece the rubes and ends up going over to their side. The aptly named Bob Dollar hasn't got much going for him except youth, innocence, and an uninformed ambition to make something of himself. It's not surprising he turned out this way, considering that his no-good parents walked out when he was seven, leaving him in the care of his crusty uncle while they went off to seek their fortune in Alaska. Now that he's all grown up and done with college, Bob takes a job with the Global Pork Rind Corporation as location scout. His mission is to scour the Texas panhandle looking for ranches that might be bought to use as hog farms for the GPR. It's a tough sell (who wants to live near a hog farm?), and the Texas outback is rough territory for salesmen under the best of circumstances. For a young man in a hurry, though, the job offers hope of quick advancement and good money down the line. But Bob, a Denver boy, has never been to Texas before, and he doesn't know the first thing about the ways of folks on the panhandle-where millionaires are likely to live in trailers and building steam locomotives in your garage might count as a normal hobby. In the little crossroads town of Woolybucket, with his landlady LaVon Fronk as his guide, he sets out to size up the locals and go in for the kill. He soon settles upon Ace and Tater Crouch as his best target: cash-poor and getting on in years, the Crouch brothers own a large spread that would be perfect for a hog farm. Unfortunately for Bob, the Crouches have more than dollars in mind. Even worse, they eventually make him see that there's more than dollars in life. Funny, deft, and sharply told, Proulx's latest (after Close Range, 1999) suffers from excessive local color in parts, but it's engaging and worthwhile-if not up to her usual level. (Kirkus Reviews)

'a contemporary Dickens ... an American League of Gentlemen'