End of Vandalism A Novel Author:Tom Drury A thief vacuums the church before stealing the chalice....A lonely woman paints her toenails in a drafty farmhouse....A sleepless man watches his restless bride scatter their bills beneath the stars....Welcome to Grouse County.... — "Tom Drury's loving, wryly intelligent take on Grouse County is at once sophisticated and compassionate. Drury's pr... more »ose is quietly heartbreaking, laugh-out-loud funny, and always, absolutely convincing. The End of Vandalism marks the beginning of a distinguished American career."
--Jayne Anne Phillips
"Remarkable...Every so often a debut novel appears that simply stuns you with the elegance and beauty of its writing....A+"
--Entertainment Weekly
"So amiably dense with anecdote and observation, the reader is bounced along by its energy....Grouse County is unabashedly American, a setting both nostalgic and wittily contemporary....In a sense, the main character is the county itself, with its eccentricities, rituals, quarrels and comforts."
--The Boston Sunday Globe
"Brilliant, wonderfully funny...It's hard to think of any novel--let alone a first novel--in which you can hear the people so well. This is indeed deadpan humor, and Tom Drury is its master."
--Annie Dillard
"Rich and readable...[Drury] possesses his made-up world with the same authority Sherwood Anderson brought to Winesburg, Ohio, and Faulkner to Yoknapatawpha County....The many characters who walk their separate paths end up weaving each other inside a mysterious pattern, in which they themselves are also caught."
--USA Today
Chosen by New York magazine and Publishers Weekly as