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    West Virginia
    West Virginia
    West Virginia
    Audiobook5 hours

    West Virginia

    Written by Joe Halstead

    Narrated by Chris Ciulla

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this audiobook

    When Jamie Paddock learns of his father's suicide, memories of his childhood in West Virginia come roaring back. One of the few people in his town to ever make it out, Jamie is living in New York City now, developing marketing videos for YouTube, struggling to write and partying a lot, all while suppressing the accent that gives him away. Spurred by an artistic curiosity surrounding his silent and private father, Jamie goes home, staying with his disabled mother and sister in their trailer, conveniently located between two Walmarts. Always poorer than the local coal miners, Jamie's family relies on welfare, but it is the mystery of his father's suicide that will help define Jamie's identity and possibly decide whether he leaves West Virginia for good.

    Editor's Note

    Gripping debut…

    After learning that his father committed suicide, aspiring writer Jamie leaves New York to head back to be with his disabled mother and sister in their West Virginia trailer. Once home, he begins to unearth strange clues about his secretive father’s aborted art career, as well as information about his mysterious death. A gripping debut novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Productions
    Release dateDec 8, 2020
    ISBN9781094411811
    Author

    Joe Halstead

    Joe Halstead currently lives in West Virginia with his wife and cat. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Five Quarterly, People Holding, Cheat River Review, Sundog Lit, The Stockholm Review, Sheepshead Review, and others. West Virginia is his first novel.

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    Reviews for West Virginia

    3.5/5

    224 ratings18 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      tried twice to listen to it, but it never went anywhere. I finally gave up -- didn't like it.
    • 2/5
      I struggled with the narrator's accent. It sounds more like Bill Clinton (Arkansas accent) than a WV accent. After reading other reviews, I decided not to continue.
    • 1/5
      I finished the book but I did not get it, too artistic for my taste.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It's nice to have a story take place where I live.
    • 5/5
      Loved learning about the mindsets and the intent of the book spoke to my own unique understandings of my community.
    • 1/5
      This book has hours of banal and stereotypical depiction of West Virginia, interspersed with random sex and a bit of horrible animal cruelty. One wonders if the author participated in torturing animals as an adolescent. Like the protagonist, this book is just sad and doesn't belong anywhere.





      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Was the author on drugs when he wrote some of this book?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I feel bad giving a low rating but the narrator completely ruined this book for me. The accents were so bad I couldn’t pay attention to the story for a good portion of the book. The parts I could tolerate listening to were well written, compelling.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Couldn't get past the first bit. Filth. No stars here.


      5 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      first off i wanna say the best part about this book is when the main characters dropped a buck instantly by shooting it in the shoulder with a FUCKING .22 RIFLE. it was so fucking ridiculous that it made me laugh for a solid minute. other than that listen to this if you want to feel gross and depressed, about the main character getting raped by a child and his sister also getting raped. no real good points to add so probably just save your time and don’t listen to this

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This books has some disturbing things in it, that I’d rather not know about. Animal torture, sexual assault. I wasn’t expecting this , as a result, I never finished.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I don’t understand the allure of this book. Ultimately, it’s a hillbilly version of Joyce’s Ulysses. Pointless meanderings that lead nowhere. The narration, too: I didn’t buy the voice.

      8 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Don’t do accents if you can’t do them well. Had to stop listening when a bad Appalachian accent started conversing with a bad Australian accent.

      10 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      It's fanstatic and mystery. Every person can be hide some secrets, maybe you ever know or not ever know.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Good story, good pacing, good use of language, full of hard images and scenes of West Virginia and New York City and the realities of poverty and modern life and decay in each place. This book won't cheer you up or entertain but it will keep you turning pages, holding your breath, until the very end. I picked up this book because my kid is in school in West Virginia right now and they, being from California, are witnessing and experiencing, first hand, this wildly different world. I was thinking I might learn something good about West Virginia...

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Not my genre. Did not appreciate the language choices, could not follow the plot line, or appreciate the main character’s angst over a lost object.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I got about 3 chapters in I think, and then the author decided to spout a bunch of racist language (I just looked him up, he seems white and I assume the voice actor is also white), so with that and the story being iffy so far I’m out.
      Just because you’re writing a fiction and staying true to those characters doesn’t make it okay to use racist slurs.

      5 people found this helpful

    • 3/5

      Well, I like the book it flowed alright. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top