Whole
136 pages
July 16, 2024
On the first day of spring in the Inland Empire of Southern California, our narrator Joe inadvertently rams his car into Ronnie, a homeless man riding a bicycle. The bike is crushed, aluminum cans are scattered, but a new relationship is formed.
| Hardcover | ISBN 9781639821693 | $35.00 |
| Paperback | ISBN 9781639821686 | $19.00 |
| eBook | ISBN 9781639821709 | $12.99 |
On the first day of spring in the Inland Empire of Southern California, our narrator Joe inadvertently rams his car into Ronnie, a homeless man riding a bicycle. The bike is crushed, aluminum cans are scattered, but a new relationship is formed. Joe encounters Ronnie and his dog Henry at the local dog park, at their campsite by the Santa Ana River, and in other, unexpected locations.
Seemingly content working in a café and leading an aimless life, Joe is twenty-eight and has started writing prose poems and short stories. He walks the streets at night, rides buses to nowhere in particular, swims in the ocean on a whim—sometimes naked, sometimes fully clothed. He is dating Ashley, a transplant from the Midwest who shares his birthday and birthyear and is a poetry professor at a small Christian college. Joe talks to himself, he talks to God, he talks to the dog he acquires. He is in love with Ashley yet longs for his ex, Cora, too.
Reminiscent of John Fante’s Ask the Dust, Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away, and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, this novel explores themes of solitude, companionship, and personal fulfillment. As the oppressive heat of summer creeps closer to the Inland Empire, Joe acts with a surprising ferocity that will leave him and those around him forever changed.
What Others Are Saying
Whole is a darkly endearing, calmly frightening, sadly funny, and starkly complex little novel that is by turns fable, romance, theology, and plainspoken testimony to life and death and love and heartbreak, all narrated by a hapless young man simply living out, for better and worse, his days and nights in the desert heat of California’s Inland Empire. Long sentence, I know. But this short book packs a deeply heartfelt punch. And it is beautiful. Read this.
Bret Lott, author of Jewel
Whole is a glorious mosaic of sheer brilliance. With lyric echoes of Bruno Schulz and Ben Loory, each piece of this mosaic bursts with imagination and hums with an interior narrative music I won’t quickly forget. Updegraff’s writing is nimble and his forthright gaze into the surprising terrain of the heart lends light into even the darkest moments.
Gina Ochsner, author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B.
Whole is an engaging novel about a young Californian who, like Shakespeare’s Othello, loves not wisely but too well. Whether Joe is courting his new girlfriend, encountering his old one, or making amends with a homeless man, his impulsiveness overcomes his good intentions time and time again. His story—and his storytelling—will divert and disturb you from the first page to the last.
Gilbert Allen, author of The Beasts of Belladonna
