Wounded by Percival Everett

Wounded has to go down as one of my favorite novels this year. My previous post dealt with another newer novel, American Youth. Both stand out as quintessentially American novels and both are excellent examples of where the literary canon is heading in this country. Percival Everett's novel, however, emerges from all the others I've read recently in the way he incorporates landscape and humanity. Wounded is about a small ranching town where peace exists just below the surface until violence descends and starts to tear apart the fabric of the town. It seems to me that this novel is a direct descendant of what happened to Matthew Shephard in Wyoming and might not have existed without that, but what's amazing is that seeing those similarities only makes this novel more devastating. Here's what Everett does best. There are so many themes running through the book; race, homophobia, the human race vs. the natural landscape, violence, our relationships with animals, but it would be impossible to pigeonhole the novel any one way. And who would want to? To do so would be to ignore every other element that makes this book beautiful.