Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2009) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Bob Munroe: Main character in The Brown Coast
• Bob: Add a description of this character.
• Maya
• George
• Randall: Bob's uncle
• Jeff Park
• Derrick
• Barry
• Vicky: Bob's wife
• Henry
• Derrick Treat: Bob's neighbor, a veterinarian
• Ellis
• Haakon
• Claire
• Djarf
• Leon
• Randy Cloatch
• Bruce
• Jacey
• Claire Treat: Derrick's wife
• Leander
• Matthew: main character in Retreat
• Mary
• Stephen: Matthew's brother
• Jim Lemons
• Gary
• George Tabbard: Matthew's neighbor and friend
• Albert
• Burt: main character in Executors of Important Energies
• Doug
• Lucy: Burt's stepmother
• Naddod
• Roger: Burt's father
• Matty
• Wade
• Dwayne: plays chess with Roger in Washington Square Park
• Ed: narrator of Down Through the Valley
• Jane: Ed's ex-wife
• Barry Kramer: Jane's new boyfriend
• Marie: Ed and Jane's daughter
• Yancy: main character in Leopard
• Officer Behrends: the police officer who finds Yancy
• Albert Price: main character in Door in Your Eye
• Charlotte: Albert's daughter
• Carol: Albert and Charlotte's neighbor

Quotes edit see section history

• “Derrick came back into the living room. "Gotta take a ride over the bridge," he said. "Need to pull something out of a horse's pussy." "What kind of thing?" Bob asked. "A baby horse, I hope."”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• For quite a while, we’d been nothing but an argument looking for different ways to happen.

  Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers

• I got an understanding of how terrible love can be. You wish you hated those people, your wife and children, because you know the things the world will do to them, because you have done some of those things yourself. It’s crazy-making, yet you cling to them with everything and close your eyes against the rest of it. But still you wake up late at night and lie there listening for the creak and splash of oars, the clank of steel, the sounds of men rowing toward your home.

  Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers

• He’d tell me love was like the chicken pox, a thing to get through early because it could really kill you in your later years.

  Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers

• ‘If you were an animal, what would you be?’ I wrote, ‘A bumblebee trying to fuck a marble.’ It’s true. Just grinding away at this goddamned thing that never gives back. Pointless.”

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• But Bob felt a kind of kinship with the slug. Had he been born a sea creature, he doubted God would have robed him in blue and yellow fins like the splendid dead fish at his feet, or put him in the body of a shark or barracuda or any of those exquisite destroyers. No, he’d probably have been family to this sea cucumber, built in the image of sewage and cursed with a chemical belch that ruined every lovely thing that drifted near.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• It looked like a half-cooked eraser with dreams of someday becoming a prostitute.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• I was hoping I could sell the patent for a hundred thousand or so and then hurry to the Gulf Coast to cram a pontoon boat and a big-titted stranger into the hollow places in my heart.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• He had slept wrong on his arms, and they’d gone numb. He tried to move them, and it was like trying to push a coin with your mind.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

• Ours isn’t the kind of brotherhood I would wish on other men, but we are blessed with a single, simple gift: in these rare moments of happiness, we can share joy as passionately and single-mindedly as we do hatred. As we skimmed across the dimming lake, I could see how much it pleased him to see me at ease, to have his happiness magnified in my face and reflected back at him. No one said anything. This was love for us, or the best that love could do.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

• Where Maya had been chosen to flit high above life’s brambles, Jacey was not ashamed to be the honest little boulder, rolling bluntly through the thorns.

  Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Charlotte
• Charleston
• Aroostook County, Maine: location of the second story, Retreat
• New York City: location of Executors of Important Energies

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Wells Tower (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Amazon.com's Best Books (November 2009: Editors' Picks, #25)
• The New Yorker's "20 under 40" List (20 important writers under age 40) (June 2010)
• New York Times Notable Books of the Year (2009, #15)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Short Stories
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary