Finally, a Novel That Truly Captures the Intensity of Gaming

Wolf in White Van is a disturbing character study of Sean , a teenager who manufacture a role play biz that almost destroys him and the people who play it . But it ’s also about how gaming is a form of redemption . There ’s a gloomy equivocalness at the essence of this mystery , making it one of the most intense read of the yr .

This is the first novel from singer / songwriter John Darnielle , creator of The Mountain Goats , and in some waysWolf in White Vanreads like one of his plaintive song about adolescent whose lives have been torn apart . But it would be more precise to say that this novel captures the feeling of listening to The Mountain Goats : it ’s dreamlike , emotionally volatile , and often weirdly mirthful in way you would n’t anticipate .

When we first meet Sean , he seems to be atoning for something — or maybe for the want of something . We know that his fount is awfully deface , and that most of his impinging with the Earth comes from home health workers who incline him . Trying to avoid people , he lives quietly at family , keep an eye on the human race through his windows . But he has one other connection to humanity , through a post - apocalyptic use playing biz he invented as a teenager .

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The game is called Trace Italian , a reference to star forts bid trace italiennes , and it ’s played through the mail service . Every clock time a instrumentalist wants to make a move , they describe it to Sean in a letter of the alphabet and he post them a description of what happens next . Most of his answers are pre - write , but he often contribute personal touches to reflect the personality of his players . He ’s made enough money on the game to live modestly , and despite the rise of the internet he ’s still able to draw new player to what amounts to the populace ’s slowest textual matter - base adventure game .

Though Sean tries not to get emotionally involved with the players , he develops sure druthers over the years . He loves the mass who give themselves completely to the phantasy , pull in quotation to their own lifespan , blurring the bounds between the plot and realness . For the most part , players of Trace Italian content themselves with enter out how to pilot the American barren to refuge in the secret plan ’s eponymous fortress . But this agonizing journey is also an escape hatch , let them to fly the repulsion and boredom of their life . The escape valve that Sean offers them is a kind of redemption , but it ’s also an vivid risk .

As we wade deeper into Sean ’s mirky past times , we get word that he ’s been sweep up in a long , dreadful lawsuit with the parent of two teenagers who went too late into Trace Italian . And we lead off to guess that these teenager ’ ecstatic / dreadful U - turn into their own imaginations is an echo of whatever happened to Sean .

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What ’s breathtaking about this novel is that Darnielle never assume the comfortable way out . He lionise the transformative index of share storytelling , but is sharp mindful of its pitfalls . The head that draw us through Sean ’s taradiddle is always about when fantasy has gone too far , or when it does too upright a job lure out the violence that lives inside our thinker ( or even , maybe , our souls ) . This is n’t just a novel about gambling , or even belt down culture , though there are plenty of reference to cheesy brand and sorcery movies of the late twentieth hundred . Instead , it ’s about the often awful ways that floor can distort our thought process , whether those stories come from the Bible , from Krull , or from our parents .

The most square part of Wolf in White Van is that it set up more question than it answers . Though we at last learn what has happened to Sean , and to some of the people who play his game , we are give to cypher out the “ why ” for ourselves .

What make one individual cast into a fantasy humanity and then range back out again , unhurt , while another is disfigured by it for life ? The means that Darnielle forces you to believe about these issue , in a variety of post , will give you chills . Nothing is more terrific , and more honest , than a story that acknowledges that there is no bright line between guilt and purity .

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