In 'On Swift Horses,' debut novelist Shannon Pufahl blends '50s noir with a love story.
In Shannon Pufahl’s engrossing, melancholy debut novel, “On Swift Horses,” California feels both scrubbed new and thick with storm clouds.
It’s practically axiomatic that every story set in 1950s America must be a critique of its squeaky-clean surfaces. “On Swift Horses” is no different. But it does it so skillfully — Pufahl’s prose is consistently lyrical and deeply observant. And her keenest observations are about the secrets we keep. Julius is gay, slowly entangling himself in a closeted relationship with a coworker who helps him monitor card cheats from a catwalk above the casino floor.
Pufahl, a former Stegner Fellow living in Monterey, is plainly a fan of the fiercest noirs to come out of the postwar era: “On Swift Horses” contains echoes of Don Carpenter’s “Hard Rain Falling,” Leonard Gardner’s “Fat City” and Patricia Highsmith’s “The Price of Salt.” That sense of unreality can sometimes make Pufahl’s dialogue ungainly. Her style, so rooted in symbol and lyricism, can make her characters sometimes speak as if they were prophets on a whiskey bender. Pufahl is so committed to the spell she’s casting that her characters’ voices fall under it too.
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