The best part of this book is that it didn't give me what I wanted. I wanted stories about bush living, their day to day lives, struggling against a formidable force of nature- the "Alaska" fantasy. Instead I got people shopping at Costco. : )

My stereotype of "Alaska" was called out and the author shows us the true Alaska through interwoven stories about people searching, striving, and surviving.Engaging read.

What a story! I feel like any one of these aspects of this story would be an excellent book on its own, but putting it all together makes for such a richer experience. It is wonderful.

I really love short story collections, and this one is really stellar.

"Slide and Glide" was probably my favorite, but there wasn't a weak story in the bunch.

There are many popular books about Alaska (not naming any) that I didn't really care for- but this collection is something else, much more honest and balanced and the writing is pretty flawless.

Can't wait to see what Newman does next.

Thanks so much for the review copy!

My review appears on Boston's artsfuse.org

https://artsfuse.org/255932/book-review-nobody-gets-out-alive-a-big-brash-book-of-alaskan-stories/

I do not award stars --

NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE :: Leigh Newman

As a proponent of the inverse correlation between the length of a work and its difficulty (poetry to short stories and on up), I have a high appreciation of the short form and try to read it as often and diversely as I can. Leigh Newman's recent collection won me over with the cover, followed by its description as a set of "dazzling, courageous stories about women struggling to survive not just grizzly bears and charging moose but the raw, exhausting legacy of their marriages and families."

The first story, Howl Palace, was brilliant, and I went hunting for everything else Newman has written before I was half through with it. I was unsurprised to learn it won The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize, and was a Best American Short Story and Pushcart Prize selection.

Howl opens the night before a sixty-seven-year-old widow's real estate agent holds an open house at her property, which is listed as an "attractively priced teardown." To Dutch, however, "every good thing that had ever happened to me happened in Howl Palace. And every bad thing too. Forty-three years. Five husbands. Two floatplanes. A lifetime. It felt as if I should honor my home, that strangers shouldn't come around poking through the kitchen or kicking the baseboards, seeing only the mold in the hot tub and the gnaw marks on the cabinets from the dogs I'd had over the years, maybe even laughing at the name."

Dutch expounds on her history, with laugh-out-loud diatribes about life, her husbands (re Skip, number 5, "Shipping him off to a facility in Washington near his daughter wasn't exactly something I struggled with"), her dogs, her efforts ("If you are looking for a reason to split five cords of wood by hand each year for forty-odd years, consider my biceps at age sixty-seven"), and her surroundings (consider the oft-mentioned and somewhat secretive "wolf room").

Just as she's setting up for the open house cookout, the real love of Dutch's life, Carl ("the beautiful deviling heartbreak of my life"), comes to ask if she will watch his dog while he's away. It's something he knows she doesn't want to do, and "somehow" the dog gets loose, wreaking havoc and sending Dutch's pre-event anxiety through the roof. It also lends to her reminiscing, Carl's imprint on so many parts of her life and the realization of why he has come to that day.

Howl Palace is a bittersweet, raucous revisiting of a life as Dutch prepares to let go of the only thing she has left. Beautifully paced and painting a picture you could look at forever, Newman shows herself a master of her craft. I didn't want it to end.

The remainder of the collection is replete with the same gorgeous phraseology, stories full of intriguing, multi-layered characters in various surroundings. The sense of place is different in each, many evoking what one envisions when they think of the wild, bicep-building life in Alaska (and yet some feeling they could take place anywhere). Not many stories feature a mastodon tusk as deftly and meaningfully as Newman does. Her writing is unique and clever, she is a wordsmith of the highest order.

My only "complaint" is that Howl Palace blew me so high out of the water I kept searching for its equal. An unfair ask, really, and beginning the set with that story is both a blessing and a curse. It's one of the best short stories I've ever read and it will keep me reading Newman's work well into the future.

Set mostly in Alaska, these wildly twisting, often hilarious short stories open up the lives of a variety of characters with unmet needs and big dreams. Author Leigh Newman, who grew up in Alaska has a talent for exploring decades in the span of single paragraphs. She also has a fine eye for immersive, descriptive images. A vivid cast of characters inhabit these eight stories; there are plenty of twists, turns, regrets, and aspirations that propel the tension. Ideal for book group discussion! Full review on BookBrowse.

I love when a book’s setting is a like a character - in Nobody Gets out Alive, Alaska is the consistent character in this fantastic collection of short stories. Alaska is a complex area with hardships and beauties that are awe-inspiring. I loved the combination of the characters and their interaction with and assimilation to Alaska as it complemented the rich, nuanced stories. Lots to discuss and think about in these works. I’m so grateful to Scribner for the advanced copy. Really, really good.

This is an intriguing group of short stories set in Alaska, a place I've never been. The characters are strong and
Alaska itself comes across as mysterious and hard. Newman does a good job of conveying emotions in a small, concise story. It's an enjoyable collection.

I really enjoyed this collection of stories about strong women and the challenges they faced in Alaska- I felt as though Alaska might well have been a metaphor for life!

A terrific collection of stories about women in Alaska. Set over the last 100 years, in the bush and in the city, it's all about the women and their relationship not only with men but with themselves. Yes. some of these stories could be set anywhere (insecurities, fears, loves are the same across the universe) but others, such as Alcan, well, that could only be set in Alaska. What an interesting story- narrated by a set of travelers. They aren't linked and therefore are best read, I think, one at a time over a period of days. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A real find for short story fans.

In the salt of the earth and visceral stories of, Nobody Gets Out Alive, by Leigh Newman, readers inhabit the state of Alaska in various forms of dress and undress.

In this book, where Alaskans refer to other American states as “The lower forty-eight,” and where the ideals of homesteading and the reality of frontier beauty still exists, readers come across a cast of characters that whether they love to love or love to hate them, are familiar and unforgettable.

In the collections’ opening story, Howl Palace, readers are made all too aware of the small and deep impacts of old age and how precarious life becomes if one fails to prepare for it through the eyes of Dutch, a 67 year old who is bankrupt and now forced to sell her home in order to survive the latter years of her colorful life.

The women in these stories, like Dutch—be they young or old—have a deadpan approach to life, which is reflected in the prose of their narratives. Girls uncover the soft (and often distasteful) centers of their fathers, and women find that they can’t outrun their problems even if they travel all the way to the Arctic.

The men in this collection—who are hard and poignant—are equally remarkable. In Slide and Glide, one of my favorites, a man who thinks his wife is cheating on him takes his family on a trip to a remote area (even by Alaskan standards), and comes face to face with his own lack of control and humanity.

In many ways these stories—full of realism at its best—are in the same vein as the stories of Melinda Moustakis and Pam Houston and Annie Proulx, whose plain spoken and unsentimental characters are as lovely and dangerous (to themselves and others) as the landscapes they inhabit. In addition, this book is something else that is entirely new.

Thank you Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy of this wonderful read.

#bookreview #debuts2022 #whatimreading #newfiction #alaska #bookstagrammer

I’ve always been fascinated by the state of Alaska: The stark and remote beauty, how people can survive the subzero temperatures, the abundance of wildlife that populates the area. So I’m usually drawn to books and movies set in Alaska. This short story collection features women from all walks of life, who are finding different ways to survive amongst the wilds of Alaska. Some of the stories are connected, with certain characters popping up in one and appearing in another.
I enjoyed all of the stories, except the last one. For some reason I just wasn’t feeling that one and chose to skim through it. My absolute favorite story was “Alcan, An Oral History”. We are taken on a tour of the Alcan highway that winds through Canada on the way to Alaska. I could perfectly envision the desolateness of the scenery through the eyes of the characters. There was even a name drop of my Ohio hometown in there, which came as a delightful little surprise!

In her debut work of fiction, author Leigh Newman presents eight stories of complex characters -- mainly women -- in the complex environment of Alaska. Like the nature of the setting itself, these stories are often unsettling, wild, troubling, and bewildering, as the women in them navigate their marriages and lives in relation to the men around them. My favorite story was the fourth, "Alcan, An Oral History", which is broken into five parts narrated by different characters as they traverse the ALCAN (Alaskan-Canadian) Highway that connects the contiguous United States to Alaska, through Canada. The connections between the narrations are not initially obvious, but together they build an incredibly powerful story of four women and two children who are each desperate in their own ways. It's been over a week since I finished that story, and I still can't stop thinking about it.

Throughout the collection there are other characters that reappear, which led to fun little Easter egg moments as I made the connections, and Newman covers the last hundred plus years in this concise book. While I didn't love each story (some just were so tough to read without any characters to root for), the collection as a whole was really well constructed and incredibly thought-provoking. Plus, any book with an Alaskan setting will automatically bump up my rating a bit because I just find it so wildly captivating. Short story fans should keep their eyes peeled for this collection when it debuts in April 2022!

NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE is a very strong story collection recommended for fans of literary fiction.

Alaska is almost a character in and of itself. In each of these stories, the landscape is quite demanding. Newman does a wonderful job of conveying a sense of place.

I appreciate how the characters struggle with realistic, everyday sorts of problems. At times, a bleak feeling pervades the collection. For me, it was best read in small doses.

I look forward to more from this author.

memorable, Immersive sense of place, and flawed, complex women you know deeply--would highly recommend for fans of Alice Munro, stories are indelible and go so deep so quickly and deftly.

An interesting ride through life in Alaska - what happens in the middle of no where and how each individual chafe get can navigate their individual travesties and trials. Some definitely have it worse than others. It was a bit boring to read at times however it was definitely worth the read and would recommend. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

There are crappy books out there and then there are good books you just don’t jell with. I pride myself on being able to tell the difference and this one firmly lands in the latter camp. Disappointing really, because it arrives on the wave of so much praise, the first few pages are just praise, how great it is, how brutally realistic, how vivid and yes. I absolutely get all that from reading this book. But it doesn’t make me enjoy it any more.
I love armchair travelling, often setting off for destinations I’d never set foot in in real life. Alaska…well, I’m not sure, I’d ever want to go. Maybe cruise by the coastline, check out the whales, but the actual place doesn’t eactly entice. The tough hardscrabble starkness of it all doesn’t appeal. It’s like a place where pioneers have gone to drink themselves into oblivion. It doesn't seem very inviting, it seems like the sort of place that lives up to the book's title.
You have to have a certain mentality to want to go there and a certain stamina to succeed upon getting there. It’s a difficult place for anyone and all the more so for women…you know, since things have been made to be more difficult for women for ages already irrespective of the destination.
And yet, there are some women tough enough, resilient enough, determined enough to set off for Alaska and made a life for themselves out there. This book collects their stories in a tangentially intersecting sort of fashion.
Objectively, it is perfectly well written, and it does a great job of rendering the people and the land real and multi-dimensional. Subjectively, much like Alaska itself, it just isn’t for everyone. Or at least, it wasn’t for me. Didn’t jive with it. Didn’t get emotionally engaged. I appreciated it on the purely intellectual level, it certainly merits reader’s appreciation quality-wise, but didn’t love it and didn’t enjoy it all that much save for a few things here and there. The last story, the one that takes you back to when Alaska was still being set up for a living, might be the best one. But overall, this is definitely one of those things where user mileage will vary. Thanks Netgalley.

"Nobody Gets Out Alive" was a very fun and interesting short story collection. I LOVE reading short stories, they are so underrated. There were only 2 stories I didn't connect with, but the others I enjoyed very much. I think my favorite was "Slide and Glide" which is about a man fearing his wife is cheating on him. "Valley of the Moon" is about 2 sisters grappling with their traumatic childhood. The ending was absolutely heartbreaking. Some of the characters in previous stories pop up in other stories. The opener, "Howl Palace" is about an older woman forced to sell her beloved house because of financial difficulties. All the stories take place in the Alaskan wilderness. You could really feel the writer's love for Alaska and her gripes with the state as well. A very honest and unflinching look at life in a rural town. The characters deal with infidelity, drug use, mental illness, nosy neighbors, etc. Leigh Newman's writing style is beautiful and has a cinematic feel. I'll definitely be reading more from her in the future.

Thank you, Netgalley and Scribner for the digital ARC.

This short story collection set against the vast Alaskan landscape. Each story features women surviving the raw environmental and emotional nature of our lives. Newman writes with space for the imagination to wonder along as a passenger listening to the voices of these eight distinct snaps in a life’s story.

For me there’s just something about women and the wild, a place so many believe belong to men. Pushing against the tide, these stories brave a new narrative, one of empowerment and hope.

Thank you to Scribner for sharing this book with me!

An extraordinary debut short stories that come alive.Alaska a place I’ve never been to seen through the eyes of these women .I laughed out loud was totally involved hated for it to end.An author I will be following a book I will be recommending.#netgalley #scribner