The God of War: A Novel

Like Joan Didion, Marisa Silver finds metaphors for disconnection in Los Angeles's arid sprawl ("The New York Times Book Review"), and in "The God of War," Silver sets in the California desert an indelible novel of the end of childhood."A stunning novel...Finely wrought characters and an illuminating portrait of [a] secret world...make for a powerful, often tragic tale." -- "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)"Marisa Silver's "The God of War" is a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty. It more >>

Like Joan Didion, Marisa Silver finds metaphors for disconnection in Los Angeles's arid sprawl ("The New York Times Book Review"), and in "The God of War," Silver sets in the California desert an indelible novel of the end of childhood."A stunning novel...Finely wrought characters and an illuminating portrait of [a] secret world...make for a powerful, often tragic tale." -- "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review)"Marisa Silver's "The God of War" is a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty. It stays with you like a lesson well and truly learned." -- Richard Russo, author of "Empire Falls""Marisa Silver's "The God of War" is as gripping as it is beautifully written. By the end I ached for these brothers, Ares and Malcolm, as if they were my own family, and I will not forget them." -- Peter Orner, author of "Esther Stories" and "The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo""Marisa Silver is the author for whom we've all been waiting. With unabashed voice she steadily, bravely, unerringly tells a heartbreakingly beautiful story for our time. "The God of War" is the truest novel I've read in ages." -- Alexandra Fuller, author of "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight"""The God of War" is such a stunning dive into a desert landscape few have understood and loved as deeply as Marisa Silver. It is no man's land, and every man's land -- there, her people wage epic battles for their lives, for their loyalties, and for their very fierce versions of love." -- Susan Straight, author of "A Million Nightingales" and "Highwire Moon"The year is 1978. Ares Ramirez, age 12, lives with his mother, Laurel, and his younger brother Malcolm in a trailer at the edge of the Salton Sea, an unintentionally man-made body of water in the middle of the Southern California desert. It is a desolate, forgotten place, whose inhabitants thrive amidst seemingly impossible circumstances.

Where birds fly by day across the desert sky, by night government fighter planes and helicopters make training runs using live ammunition, and an anonymous dead body floats in from the sea. These events inspire Ares, on the cusp of his adolescence, to enact elaborate fantasies of mortal combat. His membership in a troubled family marks Ares as a casualty of a different kind of war. Malcolm, age 7, is mentally handicapped, and his mother chooses not to do anything about it.

Ares' struggle with the burden of responsibility -- to himself and to others -- draws him into a world of drugs, violence, and sex that he is not prepared for, launching him into a very personal battle for his own identity, one that has a lethal outcome. << less