Illustration by Daniel Pudles

SET in America's crumbling industrial heartland, Philipp Meyer's first novel, “American Rust”, is so timely that it makes painful as well as enjoyable reading. The novel is a paean to the end of empire.

Though his father Henry never told him, Isaac's boyhood IQ was measured at 167—genius level. He is probably smarter than his older sister, who escaped her withering rural roots for Yale. Yet at 20 Isaac is still trapped in the small town of Buell, Pennsylvania, taking care of his father. Henry was disabled by an accident in one of the valley's poorly maintained steel mills, nearly all now closed; indeed, some of the only remaining work in Buell is tearing down these redundant structures. After stealing $4,000 from his father, Isaac plans to make his own life at last in California.

On the eve of his departure, Isaac gets together with his best friend Billy Poe, a former high-school football star who has also failed to heed the edict that at 18 you should flee the rust belt altogether. Sheltering from a rainstorm in an abandoned factory, the boys encounter a trio of tramps. In a fateful confrontation, Isaac kills one of the vagrants to save his friend. Unaware that Poe will end up taking the rap for the murder, Isaac hightails it by rail. Meanwhile, Poe samples another of America's decrepit institutions: its prison system.

Mr Meyer's voice is assured, and the story crackles with narrative tension. He develops his characters with impressive psychological and sociological insight, observing astutely that “there was something particularly American” about “blaming yourself for bad luck—that resistance to seeing your life as affected by social forces, a tendency to attribute larger problems to individual behaviour.” Meyer himself sees these larger forces all too clearly, and it is his portrayal of America's devastated industrial base that is likely to get this novel much attention: “You could not have a country, not this big, that didn't make things for itself. There would be ramifications eventually.” The author delineates the inexorable welfare dependency, petty crime and drug and alcohol abuse that follow when the infrastructure of steady employment implodes. The picture is grim, but masterfully painted.