{"product_id":"2940170428670","title":"Downtown Owl: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cbig\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Bestselling Author Chuck Kosterman's First Novel \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/big\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Like a colder, Reagan-era version of \u003ci\u003eThe Last Picture Show\u003c\/i\u003e fused with \u003ci\u003eFriday Night Lights\u003c\/i\u003e, Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time ... but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl what matters more is how you ask the question.","brand":"Simon \u0026 Schuster","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47117291749616,"sku":"2940170428670","price":23.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940170428670_p0.jpg?v=1763709919","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940170428670","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}