PRAISE FOR COUNTY ROAD SIX

“Kevin Hardcastle has established himself as an eminent literary voice for the critical stories that take place beyond city limits. His newest novel, County Road Six, digs deep into rural lands to unearth the complexity and vibrant humanity of life out in the county. To an outsider, pastoral life might be perceived as simple and slow, but in this invigorating story Hardcastle reveals intricately impassioned struggles and desires through beautifully rugged and layered prose. This novel advances a new age of literary Canadiana that leaves the city in its dust.” —Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

“Finally, a sharp atmospheric descendant from the literary world of Winter’s Bone. Hardcastle writes grief and physicality like no other—not a sentence too many; not a scene that doesn’t sing. County Road Six cuts to the heart of the tension and makes you fall in love with its deeply flawed, deeply powerful characters. Mara is a heroine that will stay with you. (Good thing she’s tough as shit.) This book marks the arrival of the next generation of rural drama, as lush as it is spare, by an award-winning author who’s already proven he can throw a hell of a punch.” —Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves and VenCo 

“Kevin Hardcastle’s prose is a wonder to behold. Here’s an author who writes with such musicality that he turns even the smallest moment luminous, and with such perfectly observed detail that each scene feels real, lived-in, and sharp to the touch. County Road Six is a gorgeous novel that tells the story of secrets that rearrange lives, set against a world of beauty and brutality, grace and reckoning.” —Nathan Hill, author of Wellness and The Nix

“Kevin Hardcastle is one of the best young writers we have in the world. County Road Six is just virtuosically written; it’s up there with the likes of Cormac McCarthy and Miriam Toews. The novel thrums with tension, heartbreak and the slow build of tragedy and violence . . . but it is also elegiac and graceful, and it made my heart so full and so heavy. It reminded me of why I like to read at all. If you don’t read this book, you’ll regret it.” —Casey Plett, author of A Safe Girl to Love

“Kevin Hardcastle carries you into the darkness of both landscape and character in County Road Six, and dares you to look away. There is both economy and beauty in his prose, and both comfort and brutality in this complex story of fathers and daughters and the generational saga of love and commitment. Nothing is easy, and everything is worth fighting for.” —Michael Farris Smith, author of Lay Your Armor Down and Desperation Road

“In gleaming prose that lovingly renders the toughness and beauty of rural life, County Road Six showcases yet again the power of Kevin Hardcastle’s compassionate eye for those people and relationships that many other writers fail to see. I can still taste the acrid remains of the fires he leaves smoldering in this accomplished second novel.” —Liz Harmer, author of The Amateurs and Strange Loops 

“County Road Six cuts a ferocious path through the raw beauty of rural Ontario, tracing legacies of violence and the slow, hard work of healing. A triumph of storytelling that is equally at home in the stillness and the storm. Hardcastle’s exquisitely rendered prose calls to fans of Eden Robinson and Cormac McCarthy.” —Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman 

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PRAISE FOR IN THE CAGE

“Hardcastle is one of Canada’s emerging literary fiction stars.”—CBC Books

“The architecture of this first novel is faultlessly conceived; the construction of the storytelling is meticulously crafted. Hardcastle has an abiding sympathy for the neglected rural poor. The characters we love will break our hearts; the low-lifes we fear are no less indelibly rendered. There is an aura of foreboding — of tragic inevitability — to the collision course of their lives. And, speaking strictly as a former wrestler, the details are true.” – John Irving, author of A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Written in taut, tough as nails prose, with a cinematic quality comparable to McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Hardcastle’s In The Cage, is, to say the least, a wild, unrelenting ride, filled with thugs and desperation and innocents and heartbreak. A damn fine book.”—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

“A potent and gripping novel that rigorously steers through rural poverty and mixed martial arts … [the characters’] depth and richness flourish throughout Hardcastle’s captivating narrative.”—Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

“A masterful mashup between genres, matching the masculine violence of the cage match with country-tinged, Mamet-esque dialogue that elevates these characters into rich portraits of desperate people living for sheer survival. A crime novel with the pulse of a sports drama and the bitter toxicity of the best country noir.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Hardcastle works in a noirish, folkloric mode that draws on Cormac McCarthy, Alistair MacLeod and Breaking Bad … [his] sentences are clean and hard, but the combinations are complex and deliberately crafted. Imagine the slow wrapping of a fist, knuckle by knuckle, and you get a sense of how Hardcastle tightens his narrative with a precision physics that’s grim, hypnotic, sometimes heartbreaking, always humane.”—The Globe & Mail

“[an] impressive debut novel … he successfully relocates the rolling, Biblical sentences pioneered by Hemingway, Faulkner and McCarthy to his small-town Ontario milieu, and the dialogue is as punchy as Elmore Leonard’s … Hardcastle is a writer to watch.”—Toronto Star

“Hardcastle’s writing could be compared to that of Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy or Ken Bruen. His pared down sentences scrutinize a way of life that is rough and unrelenting. His characters are reminiscent of those of David Adams Richards, who come across as marginalized and scorned. Yet the author has found his own style, is in command of his pen and knows his subjects.”—Praire Fire

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PRAISE FOR DEBRIS

“There is a sure-handed display of craftsmanship in these eleven stories, and a panoply of human miseries for Kevin Hardcastle’s characters to contend with … People make dire decisions; violence is commonplace but indelibly described. Hardcastle does darkness well; heartbreaking endings come naturally to him. Everyone gets hurt, but everything makes sense, and the storytelling is so good — the language, a soothing balm for the pain.”—John Irving, author of The Cider House Rules

“Debris carves straight to a reader’s gut, and more importantly to their heart. Kevin Hardcastle knows the characters who populate his stories intimately — their troubles, their fears, whatever’s ticking deep at their cores. This collection thrums with subtle power and grit, but also a well-earned measure of hope.”
—Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone

“Mr. Hardcastle’s stories are written in a powerful, brawling style: they possess courage and heart. He’s an artist who gives the impression he will break down barriers to arrive at the Truth of things. And no Truth, no spec of humanity, is too small for his keen, sympathetic eye.”—Cort McMeel, author of Short and co-founder of Murderland

“Kevin Hardcastle’s stories are like the fighters he writes about: balanced, precise, knowing exactly when and where to hit you. Debris is the world delivered straight, in all its aggression and tenderness. It’s an astonishing debut, and one that reads as if it were written by a seasoned veteran.”—Tamas Dobozy, author of Siege 13

“[Debris] has its own strong voice… smoothly connected by uncompromising settings and Hardcastle’s authentic, plainspoken country-noir voice, the 11 stories collected here will appeal to fans of gritty, back-country crime fiction, even those who typically shun short stories.”—Booklist

“[Debris] has flesh and bone, soul and brain. It’s a rare, rock-solid first book by … a dexterous writer with unflinching vision. This book’s gift is in constructing a museum of hard lives, letting us circle them like excavated marble statues, taking us close enough to see all their mutilation, power, and rough beauty.”—Alix Hawley, National Post

“Each story is a fully realized world—as rich as it is bleak, the characters powerfully and carefully drawn … Debris is a collection to savour.”—Quill & Quire, starred review

“Unflinching…Debris is impressive for any writer, especially for a first collection…Hardcastle comes close to a masterpiece.”—The Winnipeg Free Press

“The stories are told with careful precision, free of authorial judgment, in prose that reminded me of the understated lyricism of later Thomas McGuane or of David Adams Richards … [A] very fine collection, well-crafted and compelling.”—Malahat Review

“This newest incarnation of CanLit masculinity may be familiar in content, but it’s thematically fresh… Hardcastle’s MMA fighters betray a softness unfamiliar in past versions of these types of characters.”—National Post

“Hardcastle manages heart-pumping scenes without ever coming off as trite, and his characters are always firmly grounded in the familiar — a fact which makes the carnage lurking off-stage all the more unnerving. Debris offers a fresh perspective on a familiar genre, and can be recommended for this very reason.”—Broken Pencil

“Sparse and tightly controlled … Hardcastle is intent on showing us the polarity of life in small-town Canada, at once beautiful, dangerous and bizarre … Reviews of this book will no doubt allude to the ‘muscularity’ of the prose and liken Hardcastle to other writers in the country-noir tradition, but Debris earns its place as a book among books, deserving of even the most serious literary reader’s praise.”—PRISM International

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