Vlautin’s realism lacks the granularity of, say, Raymond Carver, where even the most everyday objects or events are imbued with symbolic significance ... Horace’s goal may sound incredible but it doesn’t feel that way because Vlautin is writing about ordinary people in clean, spare language. He viscerally communicates the pain and damage to the body after a fight, although, for me, the fight scenes could be more visual. This matters less than it might because the book is about identity not boxing ... Don’t Skip Out on Me shines a light on the broken-down and the drifters; it is a bruising yet surprisingly tender study of the need for human connection, and the way that urban landscapes can be more isolating than any wilderness ... Horace’s search for identity and meaning amid the white noise of urban life feels like a curiously relevant tale for us all.
Have good-hearted ordinary people ever had to endure as much pain as they do in a Willy Vlautin novel? Perhaps only in real life ... That’s what Vlautin does to us; he strips away our defenses with close-to-the bone prose that leaves us utterly exposed to the tragedy of being alive—and every bit as thankful for those moments of aching humanity before the curtain falls.
On its surface, his writing seems all too simple -- he writes clean and uncomplicated sentences that create clear images. Sometimes he presents absolutely detailed images, even about some day-to-day things, like what his characters are having for dinner and what kind of music they are listening to ... Light writing, heavy questions. Vlautin concentrates on presenting the images as if in hope that they will present answers ... All these themes are something that Vlautin has already been exploring, both through his music and writing. With Don't Skip Out on Me, it seems that he has reached some kind of pinnacle of this exploration, since he has prepared a special Richmond Fontaine instrumental soundtrack that is also annotated in the book. As the story winds to its conclusion, one of the questions the readers have to resolve themselves is, who is skipping out on whom? Is it another person, or is it just one's self? Simple question. Hard to play out.
Vlautin’s prose is deceptively simple, his clipped descriptions loaded with meaning. The narrative is as unsparing as Hopper’s fights, but what stays standing is a profound sense of hope, a hope that drives society’s downtrodden and provides the theme for much of Vlautin’s work. With his alt-country band Richmond Fontaine, Vlautin has also produced a cracking soundtrack — sure to be used in the film version that will almost certainly follow.
True to form, Vlautin is scratching at that underbelly again. Casting an unsentimental eye at the vulnerable out there because frankly, we have looked away. And he continues to stay in contact with characters he met in previous novels. This time you only need to get as far as page 13 in Don’t Skip Out On Me to come across Lonnie Dixon, a background character in Lean on Pete.
Vlautin writes with patience, tenderness, and a sharp eye toward the subtle things that can wear a person down — the fights we don’t know we’re losing until it’s already too late.
Vlautin, who says he grew up with posters of Steinbeck and the Jam on his wall, steers his characters down their hard path like a veteran scribe of the American road. There’s a plangent beauty in Horace’s love for the rural life clashing with the pressure of earning a living and his desire for self-determination. And you don’t get much more country than that, y’all.
Vlautin’s narrative seamlessly floats back and forth between Reese and Horace as he creates two beautifully rendered characters ... Horace finds success in his first tastes of competition, but there’s a distinct sense of foreboding in the air as Vlautin slowly lets this poignant tale unwind to its inevitable, heartbreaking conclusion. A powerful, haunting portrayal of lives rendered in unflinching, understated prose.
In this powerful novel, Vlautin (The Free) writes about characters whose big dreams and plans are often stunted by fate and circumstance, but who’ve managed to find a way to push through, bruised but with hard-won wisdom ... In this excellent novel, Vlautin’s reverence for the land recalls writers such as Jim Harrison and John Steinbeck.
