Larkhill, Ontario. 1989. A city on the brink of utter economic collapse. On the brink of violence. Driving home one night, unlikely passengers Jamie Garrison and Moses Moon hit a lion at fifty miles an hour. Both men stumble away from the freak accident unharmed, but neither reports the bizarre incident.
Haunted by the dead lion, Moses storms through the frozen city with his pathetic crew of wannabe skinheads searching for his mentally unstable mother. Jamie struggles with raising his young daughter and working a dead-end job in a butcher shop, where a dead body shows up in the waste buckets out back. A warning of something worse to come.
Somewhere out there in the dark, a man is still looking for his lion. His name is Astor Crane, and he has never really understood forgiveness.
Industry Reviews
"Waste is a brutal, mesmeric debut novel." -The Globe & Mail "Waste is a rollicking, offensive, and genuinely enjoyable ride." -Toronto Star "Breathtakingly violent, Waste blurs the lines between crime fiction, noir, and literary horror. It is bloody, scuzzy, and leaves a gritty aftertaste of authenticity and dark humour." -Kirkus Reviews "Sullivan's bile gives the story a definite grisly appeal and is guaranteed to make you feel better about wherever you happen to live." -The Walrus "Waste offers a visceral reminder of the forces that keep people overwhelmed by inertia, stagnant and unable to act in their own best interests." -Lit Reactor "Waste is an insightful gut-punch to the soul for any reader tough enough to take it." -Alternating Current "Depressing, depraved, dirty." -Library Bound "No shortage of dirt here: this is suburban Canadian Cringe-Lit at its finest." -Foreword Reviews "[T]he writing is adrenalin-laced, with a strong sense of the absurd." -Heavy Feather Review "The same tone of brutality and hilarity that Harry Crews created in A Feast of Snakes." -The Solute "Like a Canadian version of the rough south depicted in the novels of Larry Brown and Harry Crews." -The Winnipeg Review "In some of the sharpest prose anyone is writing today, Andrew F. Sullivan vividly brings to life some of the most damaged and sorrowful characters ever encountered in fiction. Mark my words, Waste is going to be considered one of the best books of the year." -Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All The Time "Balancing tenderness and brutality in the palm of his hand, Andrew F. Sullivan has carved out his own category to capture the ugliness of the world, his words always in search and service of some beating heart beneath the dirt. With Waste, Sullivan's deft prose hammers out a harsh, hard-fought harmony that compels you to sit down and listen." -Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness "An unflinching, black-hearted story told with relentless, straight-razor prose. Waste, Andrew F. Sullivan's brilliantly concussive new novel, reminds me most of a literary cage match: busted, doomed characters tumbled together with no hope of escape-and it all makes for one hell of a show." -Michael Christie, author of If I Fall, If I Die "Waste is the unholy amalgam of Pollack's The Devil All the Time, Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, and the films of Harmony Korine. Andrew Sullivan has written a scorcher. This book is riotously alive, pulsing with bad intentions-and very very dangerous." -Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City and Rust and Bone "Waste is an insightful gut-punch to the soul for any reader tough enough to take it." -Lit Reactor
