Kevin Canty | Everything

Published: April 17, 2011

“My novels have all come to me, all but one, as short stories that want to grow up,” said Kevin Canty in Montana Public Radio’s program, “The Write Question.”

The Missoula author’s new novel, Everything, feels grown up. Its three central characters – RL, his 19-year-old daughter Layla, and their friend June – each find a ragged edge in their lives as they navigate love, loss, the persistent weight of grief.

This book hits a graceful chord in almost every way: Canty’s evocation of Missoula (where I grew up) and western Montana feels right to me. The story is deep and surprising; his wayward characters speak to others and themselves in language that makes sense to my ears. The dialogue (no quotation marks!) feels unfettered and real – the sentences sometimes falling away, like thoughts do. But still, coherent.

"He had emerged from the past with his beautiful daughter, with the October mornings and kingfishers and the heft, the surprise of a big fish on the line … Death was waiting for all of them. This did not seem like an excuse not to live."

“There is truth and scorch in this fine new novel,” writes author Robert Olmstead. “Kevin Canty does not so much write a sentence as he cuts it into a page.”

The New Yorker named Everything as a 2010 favorite, and was one of four honor books in the 2010 Montana Book Award competition.

The author teaches fiction writing at tThe University of Montana. Previous novels include into the Great Wide Open, Nine Below Zero and Winslow in Love; he’s also written three short-story collections.

This is the best Montana-born novel I’ve read in years.

– Kristi Niemeyer