From LSU Press (Yellow Shoe Fiction): 

 

"The End of the Book is the story of an aspiring contemporary novelist who may or may not be writing a sequel to a forgotten classic, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Adam Clary works in Chicago for a famous Internet company on a massive project to digitize the world’s books, but secretly he hates his job and wishes to be a writer at a time when the book as physical object and book culture itself have never been more threatened. He is the son of a dissipated Anderson scholar, thus his obsession with Winesburg. 

 

Counterpointing Adam’s story is that of George Willard, the young protagonist of Anderson’s book, who arrives in Chicago around 1900 when it was the fastest growing city in the history of the world. Through alternating chapters, we follow George’s travails, including his marriage to the wealthy daughter of his boss, his affair with his hometown sweetheart, his artistic crisis, breakdown and flight, and along the way we see the echoes and intersections between his life and Adam’s struggling in two similar Americas, two similar times in the life of the book."

 

Praise for The End of the Book:

 

"Porter Shreve’s The End of the Book is audacious, affecting and elegiac, a terrific novel about a century of American letters that hums with the artist's deep desire to last."   — Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and The Financial Lives of the Poets

 

"Chicago, present and past, Winesburg, Ohio, past and present--two of my favorite places.  Porter Shreve’s novel, The End of the Book, had me from the very start of the story and never let go.  The way that form, which begins as counterpoint, gradually becomes the conflation of time is touching and beautiful in the way that it is effortlessly accomplished."   — Stuart Dybek, author of Paper Lantern and I Sailed With Magellan

 

"Shreve's homage, like Michael Cunningham's of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, both pays tribute to a master storyteller while enacting a completely satisfying and original and engaging novel in its own right. A distinctive and seductive book that deftly melds author/character/writer/reader."  — Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Nothing Right

 

"Sherwood Anderson’s George Willard shimmers back to life in The End of the Book, an artfully plotted evocation of Chicago in two centuries, and two aspiring writers deadened by commerce until—for each—an old love appears to reignite their best and earliest dreams. Porter Shreve delivers a richly layered hat-tip to Anderson’s impact on American letters, and a highly rewarding story at every turn."  — Paula McLain, author of Circling the Sun and The Paris Wife

 

"Porter Shreve's The End of the Book is a remarkable novel about the huge promises fathers and sons, writers and readers, books and characters, make to each other, and how we break those promises, and how still we keep hoping not to break them, or break them again, or break them completely... Shreve has written some terrific books, but this is his best yet."   — Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World and An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

 

"Anderson’s classic is the linchpin holding together the two halves of Porter Shreve’s excellent new novel, The End of the Book. Winesburg, Ohio was recognized in its day as a piercing work of literature, and The End of the Book warrants the same. This is entertaining, insightful fiction, more proof that it’s not over yet."  — Steve Donoghue, Washington Post (full review) 

 

"One of the more piquant pleasures of Porter Shreve’s The End of the Book—a novel that offers the attentive reader a surfeit of pleasure—are the contrasting sensory details of Chicago near the turn of two centuries.... The novel becomes—in addition to everything else—a playful and intelligent exploration of how a writer takes experiences from life and spins them into a work of fiction. The End of the Book is a wonderful read, and Shreve has written it with an economy and grace of style in which Sherwood Anderson would surely recognize a kindred spirit." — Alden Mudge, BookPage (full review)

 

"Shreve’s novel quickly develops a fierce momentum. He cleverly contrasts 1907... with 2008, the precipice of another severe economic downturn.... A brilliant coda to Winesburg, Ohio." — Evelyn Theiss, Cleveland Plain Dealer (full review)

 

"Porter Shreve's charming new novel The End of the Book harks back to a previous era of American storytelling in order to raise some big questions about the future of books as we know them and even about the very act of reading itself.... Clever.... Insightful." — Andrew Ervin, San Francisco Chronicle (full review)

 

"The two threads are cleverly connected in ways that are unexpected and almost, but not quite, parallel. Although both stories are told from the point of view of the two male protagonists, all of the women, both wives and both girlfriends, are sympathetically drawn, not an easy thing to do when infidelity is the issue. They are all strong and interesting women and provide a contrast of female roles in the two eras. Shreve draws a sympathetic portrait of Chicago at the beginning of both the 20th and the 21st centuries. Recommended." — HNS Review, Historical Novel Society (full review)

 

"The reader will appreciate the ingenious framing of Shreve's two concurrent stories. This dual narrative is seamless enough that one may not notice at first how life and fiction shape and reshape each other vertiginously. The overall effect is impressive.... In all, Shreve offers a winning combination of history, clarity of plot, and subtle literary playfulness. Chicago in its most iconic guise appears on nearly every page... a strong candidate for the nightstand." — Vicky Albritton, Chicago Book Review (full review)