{"product_id":"9781885030269","title":"Roughhouse","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRoughhouse\u003c\/i\u003e gives a harrowingly deadpan account of the tedium, casual violence and deviant sex that connect a surreal, semi-rural childhood with adult urban neurosis. Terse flashes of narrative, told from the point of view of a troubled youth, provide a stark sketch of an American family on the brink: a gun-toting father prone to inexplicable rages; a mother who speaks in ineffectual, half-remembered Chinese homilies; siblings rendered almost mute from excessive bleakness. And there’s the narrator himself, who responds to the torment of home and neighborhood bullies with increasingly aberrant behavior, including sexual bondage and a form of pyromania that requires placing a paper bag over one’s head and igniting it. In spare, unrelenting prose that has been honed to a point, Rutkowski ferrets out the hard bone of absurdity at the center of emotional displacement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThaddeus Rutkowski\u003c\/b\u003e grew up in central Pennsylvania and now lives in New York. His work has been published in numerous publications, including Fiction magazine and The New York Times. He is a winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café’s Poetry Slam.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Rutkowski’s] sulfuric tale of family breakdown and fetishism chronicles the confusion and opacity of traumatic childhood even as it criticizes the American society that tolerates such inhumanity.”— Publishers Weekly\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Rutkowski gives us a novel in bites and slices: sharp, shocking, and certainly not for the faint-hearted. Here is gall with gusto, a voice of reckoning, and writing to be reckoned with.” — Molly Peacock\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Kaya\/Muae","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47032874107120,"sku":"9781885030269","price":10.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781885030269_p0.jpg?v=1763605722","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781885030269","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}