Reading Kevin Canty, you know the world is an uneasy, dangerous place, and people are peculiar, jumpy beings. The stories in Honeymoon show what's behind the mask. It's a familiar world, you think. It's also a deeply unfamiliar world. The writing is exhilarating the way the best fiction is. Highly recommended.

This book was amazing. Suffering from A.D.D., it is hard for me to get into a book. THIS DID IT! Canty is amazing. I went on to read Into the great wide open. I recommend Honeymoon to anyone who loves fiction work. Plain and simple, this book is great. Click on the icon and order it.

\m/ROCK!\m/

Kevin Canty's style couldn't be more different from Sherwood Anderson's c. 1919 collection "Winesburg, Ohio," but that is the comparison that has stuck in my mind since reading "Honeymoon." Which is to say--"Honeymoon" will be a classic. These characters have secrets, they experience the kind of "adventures" that Anderson's characters do--i.e. the kind of adventure you can't tell anyone about afterward, either because it reveals too much about you or it's simply too difficult to find the words. I'll just say: Kevin Canty finds the words. Read this book! (Then reread "Winesburg, Ohio.")

Simply put, a great book. The characters in here knock you out. Pick up this book and you'll begin to look at people differently. By the way, the car's a gem too.

This stunning collection approaches literary perfection. I refuse to go on and (yawn) about it, because there's just not much more to say. It is minimalist fiction, after all.

So many--mostly undeserving--writers have been compared to Carver that it no longer has any meaning, and even a negative connotation. When somebody says that now, it's our queue to run. Too bad for a writer who actually deserves the comparison. I love Raymond Carver's work more than life itself, but Canty stood shoulder to shoulder with him right out of the gate with his first published collection. Who knows where he'll take us in the future.

[I would love to know who the editor was who recognized the brilliance of Canty-the-then-unknown a few years ago, and gave the thumbs up to publish. That's an editor who knows the craft, who knows what s/he's doing. Because of that I would take a chance on that editor's future choices. It's not like literary fiction, especially this good, is a big money-maker. Generally, the better you are, the harder it is to get published.]

An excellent collection of stories. Interesting and thought provoking with memorable and enexpected scenarios. Makes you think what you'd do if someone points a gun to your head.

I read "Into the Great Wide Open" about three months ago. At the time, I wasn't sure if I liked it, and I could tell that Canty was a first-time novelist. Some of the rambling psychoanalyzation of the protagonist, Kenny, is heavy-handed and obvious, and the character of Junie is a little vague. But I have found in recent weeks that this little book sticks oddly in my head. Kenny is one of the most acute, real teenagers since Holden Cauflield. He's a decent kid in a set of bad circumstances, and for me he has turned into one of the more memorable fictional characters I've encountered in some time. One other little note: as an aficionado of "coming-of-age" novels, it was nice to see one set in the present day. I was starting to think that only teenagers in the '50s and '60s had meaningful adolescent experiences.

I read a review of this book in a magazine and decided to go out and buy it. That was about a year and a half ago, and i've read it at least a dozen times. It is an amazing book, and I would recommend it to everyone between the ages of 14 and 20. Into the Great Wide Open is the tragically sad and moving story of Kenny and Junie, seventeen and in love. Of course, as with all young love, there are obstacles: Junie's "problem", Kenny's alcoholic father and institutionalized mother, and the world that Kenny knows will take Junie away from him. This book made me cry a lot and laugh a little, but most of all, it made me think about what a fragile gift love is. Kevin Canty made me feel everything Kenny felt as if I was in the story. I have never read a book that lets us into the mind and heart of the character as much as Into the Great Wide Open does. It is a beautifully written tale with the univeral theme: "Why must I be a teenager in love?"

I read this book... it seems like a while ago... i was in high school. I feel like it was maybe 8 years ago or so... i was 17 (i think, by looking at the publication date). I don't even remember where i got it. Did i buy it? A gift?
I just remember loving this book. It's the story of 2 unlikely people to date... by unlikely, i mean people from different "sides of the tracks." I remember being enthralled by their romance (and by some sexy scenes in which they do some things in a car).

Kevin Canty's new book "Honeymoon and Other Stories" came out not too long ago. I manage in a book store and didn't even realize that it was the same author, and picked it up when i noticed how many copies i was selling and after selling one to a musician i like.
Then when i went to my mother's house for X-mas, i rediscovered "Into the Great Wide Open" on my childhood bookshelf and remember loving it. So not i'm really excited to read "Honeymoon" and to re-read "Into..."

This is a book you can read and re-read. I think Kevin Canty definately knows how to tell a story!

I very much enjoyed the movie "Rounders". So much in fact that I thought I'd grab a copy of the book written from the screenplay. I was very disappointed. The book adds nothing to the movie. With the exception of the first chapter, the author seems to have simply cut and pasted the dialogue from the screenplay. There is nothing here that is not in the movie. See the movie and don't waste your money on the book. According the back of the book, Kevin Canty has written other books that are quite good. He must be quite embarrassed to have his name attached to this one.

I was surprised to discover there was a "novelization" of the movie. I really enjoyed it, and it was by far the best novelization I have ever read -- not that I've read many. (I only picked this up because I like reading books about poker.) But this is a serious literary book that just puts the movie into words, and in doing so, I though made the movie and the charcaters much fuller. I only give four stars because it is not an origional story.

Straight out of the mouth of teddy kgb himself, this book rocks

I was really excited to read "Nine Below Zero" after reading Kevin Canty's first novel, "Into The Great Wide Open," but this one kind of left me cold (so to speak.) I don't mind a book that's bleak if there's a teensy ray of hope somewhere, but Canty can't seem to offer us one. Sure, "Into the Great Wide Open" was also about a man obsessed with a screwed-up woman, but in that book, he was able to give us a sense of why the man found the woman so compelling. In "Nine Below Zero," it's much harder to figure out why the man would even give the woman the time of day. That said, Canty does describe the Montana landscape beautifully, and his writing has an attractively spare and clean quality.

I guess this just isn't "my kind of book." Depressing, unlikable characters, no matter how well written, made this tough going for me. While the author has an excellent writing style, the story and its protagonist left me cold.

I love Kevin Canty's work. He is my favorite author and I can't wait for him to write another book (of course his new collection is due out very soon!). This book, however, isn't for everyone. There are twists and turns of plot, but the main topic of this novel is the struggle within the main characters. Canty has a way with manipulating the psyches of depressed and lonely people; he has a unique ability to show the deepness and complexity of human emotion like no other writer that is alive today. If you have never read Kevin before I suggest you read his other novel first (Into The Great Wide Open, or evenn better, read his short story collection, A Stranger In This World, that is the best book I own!!), simply because this book is a lot to handle if you don't know what to expect. You should expect long narrative sequences that dive into the minds of the characters. No thought is left out, EVERYTHING is thought about and with complete honesty, something that is hard to find nowadays. I am at a loss for words to describe this book. Usually in modern fiction there is no more to learn than a moral lesson or a cleverly disguised metaphor, but by reading Canty I have again seen the core of human emotion; I have relearned how people see each other and how they think. BEST BOOK YOU WILL READ by a modern American author. BUY IT!!!