This novel won the 2018 Working Class Studies Association Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing and garnered starred reviews from both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Its characters are Thad Broom, an Afghanistan veteran suffering from PTSD, his also traumatized mother, April, and his buddy Aiden McCall. When Aiden and Thad witness the accidental death of their dope dealer, bundles of cash and dope land in their laps. “Scenes unfold at a furious pace, yet contain such rich description that readers will do well to read slowly, savoring Joy's prose. . . . Joy's work perfectly aligns with the author's self-described ‘Appalachian noir’ genre, as a sticky film of desperation and tragedy cloaks everything his characters touch. April, Aiden and Thad are hopelessly conflicted, dripping with history and heartache, yet they cling to unique dreams about what life could look like if they carried a bit less weight of the world upon their shoulders.”—Associated Press. “The Weight of This World is a beautiful nightmare of lives battered by the forces of serendipity and inevitability. Of lives swirling down the drain in a haze of meth, abuse, blood, and, of all things, love.”—Reed Farrel Coleman. “The Weight of This World is a savage and heartbreaking tragedy. David Joy writes with a deep wisdom, compassion, and respect for the psychic and physical wounds, the pain and anger and sadness that at once shackle his broken characters and hurl them toward choices and outcomes that linger with the reader long after the last page is read. Most impressive, Joy has written about the cost of loyalty based in childhood friendships that no longer exist in the adult world, and how sacrifices made out of the love for another can lead to the ruin of the self.”—Eric Rickstad. David Joy grew up in Charlotte and has been living in Western North Carolina since he enrolled at Western Carolina University. He is one of those rare writers whose gifts have allowed him to go right from college to a full-time writing career.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a 2018 paperback reprint of a 2017 release. 292 pages with a Discussion Guide, Joy’s essay, “Digging the Trash,” and an excerpt from The Line that Held Us, Joy’s next novel. Trade paperback