There's Grandaddy Jake Santee, 99 years old, an unreformed gambler, cranky reprobate and fierce opponent of the work ethic. Thanks to his home-distilled hooch, Ol' Death Whisper, he reckons he's in with good shot at immortality. And then there's Tiny, adopted at the age of four by Grandaddy Jake, a giant young man as gentle as Jake is belligerent.
And then there's Fup, an uncompromising twenty-pound mallard, partial to a drink herself, whose unique presence transforms the Santee household.
Hilarious, heartwarming and magical, Fup is a contemporary fable that inspires an almost evangelical fervour in all who read it. It is a work of enormous originality with a giant heart.
And then there's Fup, an uncompromising twenty-pound mallard, partial to a drink herself, whose unique presence transforms the Santee household.
Hilarious, heartwarming and magical, Fup is a contemporary fable that inspires an almost evangelical fervour in all who read it. It is a work of enormous originality with a giant heart.
I was a "wilderness educator" back in Texas in the mid-eighties . . . At night I used to read these tough, streetwise kids to sleep - Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, and a fable called Fup by Jim Dodge. They loved Fup in particular, a fable about a duck . . . I still hear from these kids - they're all over the country now and generally they're out of trouble, except for the fact that they might be reading Fup to their kids Colum McCann Paris Review