What people are saying about The Hammerhead Chronicles
“Deft and engrossing, The Hammerhead Chronicles illuminates the threads that connect us as communities, families, friends, and even enemies. Gould, with his lucent prose and wise insights into the human heart, gives us characters as real and conflicted as any to be found in fiction. Their stories become a luminous weaving of fate and will, grief and desire, which sheds light on the families to which we're born, the families we make, and the families we find along the way."
Taylor Brown, author of Wingwalkers
“Scott Gould understands two great truths of southern storytelling: everyone is weird, and comedy and tragedy always hold hands. He is also a great novelist who knows that how a story is shuffled decides what it means. This book reads so fast and so funny that you don’t mind when it grabs you first by the lapels and then by something inside your chest.”
Elise Blackwell, author of Hunger and The Lower Quarter
”A wild ride through the ups and downs of family and friendship, Scott Gould’s The Hammerhead Chronicles is as big-hearted as it is hilarious. Skillfully weaving no less than seven points of view, including a ghost, and not excluding creepy infestations, Gould’s novel wittily spoofs the Southern gothic tale and made me laugh out loud.”
Karen Brennan, author of Television, a Memoir
“Scott Gould’s newest book, The Hammerhead Chronicles, advances his reputation as a uniquely inventive contemporary master of the comic tradition in Southern literature. The storytelling here sizzles with wit and wild play, with plot that terrifyingly and thrillingly jumps the tracks, and with perfect storms of reliable and unreliable revelations.”
Kevin McIlvoy, author of One Kind Favor
“In his latest novel The Hammerhead Chronicles, Scott Gould captures with keen insight and uncanny observation the complexities of human relationships and their inevitable accompaniments of hilarity and heartbreak. Beyond the humor, this is a poignant story about the beauty of life and the enduring powers of hope and love. I loved this book!”
Michel Stone, author of The Iguana Tree and Border Child
“Beautifully crafted, told in a chorus of original voices, The Hammerhead Chronicles evokes its characters in such a way as to render them somehow next-door familiar but also as mysterious and complicated as life itself. These people are just like the rest of us, in other words, great big messes one and all, and Scott Gould is honest and clear-eyed and willing to take risks in his rendering. I read these pages with serious admiration.”