Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Whoa! Hold on to your hat - Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is an adrenaline-fuelled bareback rodeo ride of a book, peppered with caustic low-lifes, desperate events, seedy carnival men and, er, Vikings.

Like Donald Ray Pollock - whose Knockemstiff is another stunning, nerve-wracking first collection of stories - Tower has an uncanny and slightly alarming gift for bringing society's downbeats to our appalled attention. Also like Pollock, he roots these unfortunates in the small, tortured worlds of their relationships, from which, it seems, there is little chance of escape.

A common thread through these tales is the inability of step-parents to see eye to eye with their step-children (and vice versa), but Tower also gives us two brothers who can't stand each other, an old man who befriends a drug dealer, and a team of marauding Vikings intent on some serious pillage.

Be warned (but not put off): Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is visceral stuff, but it's compelling, and it brings to these shores one of the most exciting writers around.