Lurvy: A Farmer's Almanac

by Hal Niedzviecki

Charlotte the spider... Wilbur the pig... Fern and Avery... and Lurvy, the hired hand. They and all the other characters from the timeless children's classic that you remember so well are back, in author and small-press overlord Hal Niedzviecki's first novel, Lurvy: a farmer's almanac. A caveat: given the ( ahem ) rather significant changes in social morays since the first appearance of these jolly folk, happenings on the Arable farm are somewhat...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1552450805
• ISBN13: 9781552450802
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Experimental novel that actually succeeds pretty well

Up front disclaimer: I am a good personal friend of the author. Anyway, I'll write this on the assumption that you'll trust what I say is honest regardless. Lurvy is Hal's best novel, and not only is it relatively good compared to his others, it's good on any standard scale. It's a rewriting of E.B. White's marvelous Charlotte's Web, but just about as different as can be. The style is very experimental: quirky, visceral prose that's often more train of thought than plot oriented; giving way on occasion to passages that are in cartoon format; and other maneuvers. Probably that sounds like an unlikely mixture to succeed, but it did (for me, at least, and much as I like Hal as a friend and a writer, not all his writing does). The book successfully creates a dark and emotionally forbidding atmosphere and puts a mildly hallucinogenic lining on the clouds. Do you like to pooh-pooh the "mainstream"? Would you go see a punk band that you'd never heard before? Well, don't chicken out now. This novel is right up your alley -- plus it's from a cool little indy publisher in Toronto.