Beartooth - Callan Wink
I received a review copy of this novel via NetGalley.
Publisher – Spiegel & Grau
Published – February 11th, 2025
Price – £21.95 hardback
People say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but I'm not at all ashamed to say that I requested an ARC of this from the publisher entirely based on the cover art and the title. I don't think I even read the blurb before I asked for it, so let's read it together now:
Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of Cormac McCarthy and Donald Ray Pollock.
In an aging, timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid, on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving off the wild after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration, or the medical bills they can’t afford from their father’s fatal illness, or the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is . . . different, more instinctual, deeply in tune with the natural world.
Desperate for money, they are approached by a shadowy out-of-towner with a proposition, and the brothers agree to attempt a heist of natural resources from Yellowstone, a federal crime. Beartooth is a fast-paced tale with moments of surprising poignancy set in the grandeur of the American West. Evoking the timeless voices of American pastoral storytelling, this is a bracing, masterful novel about survival, revenge, and the bond between brothers.
I won't bury the lede here. I really loved Beartooth, and it's a strong contender for my favourite book so far this year.
I'm a very fast trader generally, and this is a relatively short book, so I expected to rattle through it. The blurb promises a "fast-paced tale" but I didn't find that to be the case (which sounds like a criticism, but it isn't). There's a quality to Wink's writing, and to the sprawling, verdant setting, that almost demands you slow down and drink it in. I found myself stopping for a few minutes after each section to sit and reflect on what I'd just read before carrying on, which is not something I generally do when I'm reading.
Despite being a novel about adult men this feels like a coming-of-age story in a lot of ways. Thad begins the novel as an elder brother acting almost as a surrogate father to his younger brother, their actual father dead and their mother absent. He's dealing with debts, with trying to keep the house standing, with making sure that they have enough money to eat, with making sure that they both keep working. But it's all too much, and he's on the verge of becoming "worn out", something his father always warned him against. After their heist doesn't pan out the way they expect it to he retreats into himself, shutting himself away from the world and entering a sort of hibernation that sees him almost regress to childhood. And it's through this regression that his brother is finally allowed to step out from under his shadow and to start carving his own path - a path that leads him away from Thad, ultimately. By the time Thad finally emerges from his hibernation it's as a transformed man who, maybe, is finally ready to join the world in ways he never has before.
Wink's prose is fantastic, painting his world in small details that add up to a much larger whole. His characters feel alive, ready to stride off the page, and the relationship between Thad and his brother feels real and complex and honest. We don't spend much time with Hazen but I really felt like I knew him and understood him - possibly better than his brother understood him - despite that.
The publisher lists this under "Mystery & Thrillers" and I suppose that that's true, in that the plot concerns itself with a criminal act and the subsequent fallout from it, including an act of extreme violence that the entire narrative hinges around. But we never actually see the violence, only the consequences of it, and the heist is slow and measured and undertaker in the depths of night with nobody else around. It's the quietest thriller I've ever read. Much like the relationships that Wink develops, much of what's important here happens off the page, but we understand enough to be able to piece it together ourselves.
This one doesn't come out until February next year, but I'll definitely be picking up a physical copy when it lands.