Tinder Press
Tinder Press
Tinder Press
A birdwatcher's guide to the human heart - an unconventional coming of age story from an unforgettable new voice that will appeal to fans of David Vann and Annie Proulx.
With wry humour and real freshness, SNAPPER charts the disastrous love affair between career birdwatcher Nathan Lochmueller and the place that made him.
Set in a brilliantly observed rural Indiana, 'the bastard son of the Midwest', SNAPPER is a book about birdwatching, a woman who won't stay true, and a pick-up truck that won't start. Here turtles eat alligators for breakfast, Klansmen skulk in the undergrowth, and truckers drop into the diner of a town named Santa Claus to ensure that no child's Christmas letter goes unanswered, while Nathan grapples with the eternal question: should I stay, or should I go? Kimberling's vision of small-town life is as characterful as Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, but bristling with the tensions of race, class, poverty and prejudice, it makes for a bracing read.
Superb... always engaging, sometimes beautiful and often funny' - Telegraph
Captivating... Snapper could do for birdwatchers what Annie Proulx did for small-town newspaper reporters and cowboys - Independent on Sunday
Funny and adroit fiction - Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
Delightfully entertaining - Esquire
Brilliant... an absolute joy of a book. I predict big things for it - Scott Pack, Me and My Big Mouth
Brimming with unusual characters and hilarious idisoyncracies... Kimberling shows much promise - Shortlist
Fascinating and captivating - Washington Post
Funny and absorbing' - Booklist
Brian Kimberling was born and grew up in Indiana, where he was briefly employed as an ornithologist, a job that inspired his first book, SNAPPER. Before settling in the UK, he lived and worked in Prague, and drew on extensive experience teaching English in bars to create the character of Elliott in GOULASH. He now lives and works in Bath.