The Ironsmith

THE IRONSMITH. A TALE OF OBSESSION, COMPULSION AND DELUSION

Born out of myth and fairytale, in particular the tradition of the wise old wizard mentoring a bumbling apprentice, and told in language echoing Homer, Beowulf, biblical scripture and John Coltrane, among others, The Ironsmith evolves into a surreal Bildungsroman of a self-perceived “monster,” a painfully introverted young man whose obsession with the ancient sport of weightlifting causes him to withdraw into an increasingly delusional world that anachronistically intersects classical Greece, the Middle Ages, the Industrial Age, WWI and II, the tumultuous sixties, and the age of the Internet. 

“. . . muscular, visceral language. REYoung’s prose is like a bloodred wine, pungent with notes of “comic books and cartoons, fairytales, movies, songs, embedded myths and fantasies” .  .  . A study of obsession in exuberant prose.” 

–Steven Moore, author of The Novel: an Alternative History