The Never-Open Desert Diner can best be described as Noir fiction in the vein of stories like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca to name but two. For those of you that are not quite sure what this means here is a definition: A genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. Yep this novel has them all. Ben Jones scrapes out a living as he traverses a short, desolate stretch of Utah Highway 117 making deliveries to a cadre of citizenry living for the most part under the radar and no cell phone service. The highlight being stops at The Never Open Desert Diner - or is it? Who are these people? What is their story? What happens to Ben? I really, really enjoyed this book. It is very atmospheric in its portrayal of the desert. The characterizations felt honest. I cared about what happened to Ben and disliked his nemesis. I hope you will give this one a try. You won’t regret it. -Amy O.

Anderson’s first book. Not perfect (I at times wanted to suggest changes to an unrealistic sentence) but a damn good story, with occasional sentences worth savoring. Hard to put down.

1.5 stars. This novel was a confusing mess. It doesn't even technically have a climax. It happens off-stage (which is the best way I can convey that) and you as the reader only get the aftermath. The plot had too many inconsistencies and it becomes nonsensical in the end with many plot holes.

Ben Jones, a Jewish Native-American truck driver, is our main character, which makes for a very interesting mix of heritages, but the author does nothing with this because Ben is abandoned and adopted at a young age and therefore only his outward appearance takes on these characteristics. He is inactive as a person unless he literally sees danger in front of him and then he'll proceed to move. He has no ability to think ahead when very obvious dangers are going to happen--he's too busy following his truck schedule to really deviate too far from it. Pregnant Ginny goes missing; he'll look next week. Guy is lost in the desert; he'll help tomorrow. If he really loved Claire, he should have been there when she was meeting up with her Ex. He should have insisted on it, especially when he knows something is going on around him. He was afraid to lead Josh to her in the first place, why does that fear just instantly vanish? She dies but it easily could have been prevented, especially when she knows about this "Chinese princess" who her ex is seeing and whose father is rich and dangerous.

The investigation about the cello was just absurd and the dragging the reader to a police station in order to spell out the plot was even more so. It's as if the author realized everything essential to understanding what was going on was missing and tried to turn it into a nice neat package in two scenes, but technically one. Why did the investigator feel the need to use elaborate ruses on Ben in the first place? The better question still is when the woman sees Walt dancing with Claire why she doesn't go inside and demand where the cello is? They had to know what she looked like in order to look for her, didn't they?

This book started out trying to be very Literary, but as it progressed it just devolved into regular fiction and then tried to make it Literary again by letting Claire die (yes let, this didn't seem like a natural progression because it was so certain to happen that Ben would have had to be unconscious to miss it). He never really shows any worry or any frantic mannerisms when he discovers the SUV, beforehand he's running when he gets there he barely focuses on Claire with doing little more than shout her name. He calmly takes Walt home and then calmly returns to try and find her. Doesn't call for help (yes, I know it would have been awhile, but he doesn't really do much of anything aside from fixing something he caused in the first place). The literature doesn't come back and it is more or less a poor excuse to use an information dump at the beginning to explain a stretch of desert road. It's a desert road without much immersion done by the author we learn it's hot, but there isn't much else when it comes to actually feeling the power of the desert. The only thing it did do was explain mirages, not actually let them happen.

There are many typos in here and probably more that I didn't catch. I've listed the ones I did in my updates.

This book just had one too many ideas that it was hard to focus on anything. The subplots just lengthened out what was really a short story. It probably would have been better had it just focused on the diner and the people close to the owner of the diner.

For a note to authors, don't go with Caravel Books; they don't properly edit their novels.

What I originally hoped to be a Hitchcockian thriller turned out to be a bad Thelma&Louise fanfic. Utterly disappointed with this one.

could not put this book down. a little bit noir, an original narrator and locale and a crackling good story. I highly recommend it.

I received this book free from Blogging for Books in exchange for my review, all opinions are my own. A strange but captivating story, I loved Claire, Walt, and Ben. Ginny made a great secondary character but I'd love to know more of her story. Mysterious and interesting, it was hard to put down.

This came very close to being really good, but it fell just short of that for me. The plot seemed unnecessarily complex, there were some odd coincidences within it, and also odd random characters that didn’t really seem to serve a purpose. For the record, I am not talking about the Preacher or some of the area’s residents. They added color, gave the setting it’s sense of place.

But on the good side, the writing is solid and enjoyable. I liked the main character, which is what kept me reading. A tighter plot line and more action happening onscreen rather than off, and this would have gotten more stars from me,

"Most people associate the desert with what is missing - water and people. They never think of the one thing the desert has more of - light. So much light."

Ben, a truck driver, delivers goods to hermits living up and down a lonely dead-end road in the arid Utah desert. His customers include two eccentric brothers, ranchers, a pregnant woman with unmatched cravings for butter brickle ice-cream, a preacher who repents by sporting a humongous cross on his back while traveling the highway, a cellist who 'plays' her instrument in the nude (without a stringed bow), and the aging owner of a never-open (yet functioning and registered) diner once of movie-fame.

Mysterious occurrences arise; the past holds histories some would rather leave uncovered, and others that may yet bring salvation. There are mistakes that follow some to the end, snap judgments resulting in tragic consequences, misunderstandings that lead to unfortunate rifts, love that is returned, spurned, forsaken, and rekindled (not just between lovers, but between families and neighbors), and above all, there is the wisdom gained in contemplating the vastness and (seeming) emptiness of the desert.

*swoon* / falls over / *fanning self and smelling the salts*

Within moment of starting The Never-Open Desert Diner, I wanted to crawl up into its pages, to become fully overwhelmed and swallowed whole by the intoxicating world that Anderson brings into being. A world that is utterly raw, and vivid, and unflinchingly honest, even in its deceptiveness, and that felt more real for me than much of my conscious experience.

It would be difficult to overstate how much I loved this book. An absolutely brilliant, gritty-noir, rich, authentic rendering of unconquered frontiers, The Never-Open Desert Diner transported me elsewhere like few works of fiction ever have. Incidentally, 'the West' has been coming up some in my reading list recently (just finished an excellent history, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War on the Middle Border and the Making of American Regionalism), so coming across this book now holds for me that aura of inevitability, or of a grander design, or at least of a little bit of magic(al coincidence..)

The atmosphere alone would garner 5 stars from me, but I also happened to love the characterizations (and our protagonist, Ben, who is a quiet but kind, moral, beautiful human being), the pacing (thoughtful, deliberate, yet also suspenseful), and the insights imbuing each page (filled with profundity for those choosing to discern the meaning of Anderson's music). And, most of all, I love how Anderson managed all these effects with such subtlety. Bravo! Absolutely magnificent debut novel!

A Note About the Rating:
I have no illusions that my reviews are in any way 'objective' (there is no such thing). Still, most of the time I try to at least distance myself a bit from how I feel about a book and what I think about it and its merits, and so I've rated plenty of books I've disliked at 4 or 5 stars. With this review, I'm leaning a bit the other direction -I'm writing this from the depths of my heart/soul/being/something other than my cognition. Which may be a good thing - an indication that Desert Diner gripped me in more than an intellectual way (which is how I usually make sense of life). Perhaps, in fact, I should add one more star, as this is a rare book that shocked me out of my analytical frame of mind into a dreamy, inspired one.

Other Related Notes:
- Anderson's flow is mostly unbroken, but the poeticism of his prose is not always consistent. His phrasing is never awkward, but at times, more melodious than others. Still, this is a minor point for a debut author of such skill in other domains.

- This is a brooding, gritty, subtle character study - both of our human hermits and of the desert/ what it symbolizes. There are no bold declarations of feelings/love, not much talking even, there's no conventional endings, no action scenes, no neat resolutions, and the like. If you're in the mood for a 'mystery', for an action-packed Western, for witty dialogue, or for any number of things this book is not, you may not enjoy it.

- I received a copy from the publisher via The Reading Room. But, it turns out that I had forgotten I entered this giveaway on RR, and so also purchased this book - I was that excited about it. Which, in retrospect, I'm glad I did, because I would absolutely like to support this author.

interesting novel, felt like a Coen Brothers film. odd and interesting characters, and just enough of a plot to keep the story moving.

This book is exceptionally hard to describe. I'm not normally one for general lit, but the premise caught my interest and I am thrilled to have been able to locate a copy. Reading this book is like walking into the ocean - you can feel yourself sinking deeper into the story at a regular pace to begin with, and then all of a sudden you're in over your head and invested in all the characters, unable to wait to finish. The plot feels intimate, like a cantankerous old man sharing a story only the locals know, and while I wouldn't say it's anywhere close to a "literary crime thriller" you'll have no trouble staying interested until the very end.