Praise

“First Consonants touches on the origins of violence, of love, and what it means to find one’s way through the maze that is the world. Here is a story that is engrossing, vulnerable and wise in a way that few books are these days.”

—Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden

“A compelling, at times relentless novel that gives the term antihero a brand new spin.”

—Felice Picano, author of Like People in History, The Book of Lies, and Onyx

“A flame of rage burns at the core of Brian Moriarty, ignited by a traumatic birth and fueled by a lifetime of debasement and abuse because Brian stutters. The text of John Whittier Treat’s First Consonants is incendiary, placing the reader in the furious heart of Brian’s world. As we may decry his actions, we cannot help but want a balm for him, a cool soothing of his implacable ire, lest it consume and reduce him to ash.”

—Terry Wolverton, the author of Stealing Angel

“Brian Moriarty intuits truths about his life he never expresses in words, nor even in thoughts. First Consonants tells the story of his long journey to confront those truths. Brian traverses landscapes, internal and external, and grapples with the reality of violence, the complexity of family, the insidiousness of faith. Thrumming beneath it all, John Whittier Treat’s unrelentingly poignant prose grounds and belies the central theme: the aching unrealized potential of language.”

—Ana Maria Spagna, author of Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going

“This remarkable and moving novel of a boy and a man struggling to overcome the violence the world inflicts on him due to his stutter made me rethink so many of my assumptions about language and the body. Written in ludic, kinetic prose, at turns beautiful and harrowing, it has an expansiveness and ethical import that is rare.”

—Alistair McCartney, author of The Disintegrations