Shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award (gay debut fiction)

Shortlisted for a ReLit Award (best novel)

SHUCK (noun): the outer covering of a nut or of an ear of corn; the shell of an oyster or clam; something of little value
SHUCK (verb): to peel off (as in clothing)

Shuck is the intense, dazzling diary of Jaeven Marshall, a quasi-homeless hustler who seeks his fame and fortune in New York, where he tries to manage his reputation as the city's porn star du jour when he's not dumpster diving, tweaking, or trying to get published. As his dreams of becoming a literary star grow dim, and when his love affair with a moody painter becomes hopelessly messy, he tries to reconfigure his life by documenting obsessive lists from found trash, and by hustling, which steals little pieces of his body and scatters them all over the city.

Shuck is a remarkable peep show of a novel about what binds artists and prostitutes, and the collateral damage that happens when they try to recover what they have lost.

Now in its second printing!

Daniel Allen Cox is the author of the novels Shuck (2008), shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and a ReLit Award, and Krakow Melt (2010), shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Daniel has spoken and performed widely at literary festivals and universities, and on CBC Radio One. In the 2009 Montreal Mirror readers” poll, Daniel was voted one of the top 10 best local authors. He writes a monthly column for Capital Xtra and lives in Montreal.

Daniel Allen Cox's profile page

• Short-listed, Lambda Literary Award

Its sex-worker authorship yields a work that is as exceptional as it is sensational. Shuck's read is simple, yet compelling and provocative.
-Pink (Chicago)

Pink

Shuck is fantastic fun to read. Assured and accomplished, Shuck is also chock-full of anarchic delights: loopy lists, acerbic asides, bursts of poetic description. And sex! It's so exciting to come across such a sensational book.
-Derek McCormack, author of The Haunted Hillbilly

Derek McCormack

Shuck was deservingly nominated for a 2009 Lambda Literary Award and will transport you back to the peep show that used to be glorious New York.
-Richard Burnett, Hour (Montreal) and Current (Toronto)

Hour / Current

Readers' experiences of the book will match Jaeven's experience of the world: fragmented, funny, harrowing, and humbling, with bursts of found poetry that transform the mundane world into a place of fleeting beauty.
-Passport Magazine

Passport

NewPages

An invigorating first novel....Cox's New York City has an off-hand, vibrant authenticity. It glitters and fumes.
-The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

A great new voice to add to gay literature.
-InsightOut Book Club

InsightOut Book Club

In Shuck, these supposedly diametric opposites [of writer and whore] have met, made out and created a gay porn lovechild that references Dennis Cooper, JT LeRoy and the Marquis de Sade.
-Hour Magazine (Montreal)

Hour

Jaeven may prove a capricious, unreliable narrator, but he's also a one-man tour de force.... Cox has opted to give his hustler a heart beneath his gruff exterior; the cocky man becomes a quivering, broken boy in the space of a page.... Already shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, Cox's novel is an astute examination of New York City's urban underbelly, as seen through the eyes of a fallen, wounded, but not flightless young bird of prey.
-Bay Area Reporter

Bay Area Reporter

At once a love letter to chaos and a revelation of trauma--in short, resilience through language. I highly recommend.
-Big Other (Chicago)

Big Other

Alternately brutal and witty, Shuck is an episodic book, en exhilarating ride in which the protagonist performs a kind of wistful eulogy for the seediness of the pre-Giuliani Manhattan.... As Shuck draws to a close, the author subtly points to a rethinking of our culture's larger attitudes towards sex workers. That Cox manages to convey these larger ideas without heavy-handedness makes Shuck one of those rare books that has both ample brains and raunchy sex appeal.
-Gay and Lesbian Review

Gay and Lesbian Review

From violent johns to literary rejection letters, Shuck is unwavering in its portrayal of getting eaten slowly, but surely, by New York City's Big Apple.... The diary entries are reminiscent of Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries. It explores addiction, sexuality, and the part of New York City that isn't advertised.
-EDGE Publications (Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, et al)

EDGE

Cox is a very detailed writer, adding the most interesting nuances into his writing.... Shuck is a fantastic, quick-paced book that will have you laughing, cringing and hoping that something will happen for [main character] Jaeven.
-Book Flapper blog

Book Flapper

The author himself is a former porn star who lets us peer deeply into a bizarre world--not through a clear lens, but through a kaleidoscope.... [Shuck] never fails to entertain.
-Instinct magazine

Instinct

It's an exhilarating read; Cox has managed to make the seediness and occasional brutality of this world downright glamorous, recreating the New York of this time with eerie precision.
-Montreal Mirror

Montreal Mirror

Cox deftly renders his non-traditional subject matter aesthetic and meaningful: porn shoots are predicated on relationships of power, bruises are beautiful, and discarded objects are emblems of cultural experience.... Shuck is a meditation on art and eroticism and commodity, and a document of sexual and psychological awakening.
-Montreal Review of Books

Montreal Review of Books

Cox takes narrative structure, smacks it around ... hogties it, pulls its pants down and spanks its tuchus until it's as red as Rudolph's nose.... Perhaps the only thing that can really be said about Shuck is, one can only hope Daniel Allen Cox ends up being a very prolific writer.
-Gay People's Chronicle

Gay People's Chronicle

This is Breakfast at Tiffany's if Chuck Palahniuk had written it.... Pornographers, players, artists, Duran Duran, Fiorucci, fuckups, and degenerates fill Shuck with a kinetic energy that tastes like sugar but burns like battery acid.
-Nexus

Nexus

Daniel Allen Cox writes truthfully and elegantly about a New York that I knew very well and that I miss very much. Set in the late 1990s, his novel Shuck describes with great clarity and verve the last gasp of a gritty Manhattan just before the war with the Eskimos, a bygone era that existed before wealth and privilege strangled the sweet life out of street life.
-Bruce LaBruce, director of Otto; or, Up with Dead People

Bruce LaBruce

In his novel Shuck, Daniel Allen Cox gives us Jaeven Marshall, the bastard love-child of Dennis Cooper and Jim Carroll. He's a hustler, self-abuser, wannabe diarist, and aspirant to the dubious title of 'Boy New York'. You'll regret getting to know him, but you'll wish he were in your bed.
-Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Program and Hello, I'm Special

Hal Niedzviecki

Shuck is a novel that you think you're listening to with earbuds on a semi-long, semi-hard bus ride. You like to hear about dirty sex, especially from a stranger because deep down you like to think that we are all hilarious dirty strangers.... It is suddenly something you can't live without.
-Broken Pencil

Broken Pencil

Explores the disconnect between love and sex through the eyes of a young hustler... Shuck is sexy and sad, a fast read with a lingering aftertaste.
-Uptown (Winnipeg)

Uptown

Hustler novels aren't as ubiquitous as coming out novels in the canon of young queer writers, but they are often just as indistinguishable one from another. Not so with Cox's compact and bracingly original depiction of Jaeven Marshall, a charismatic boy for hire who can pirouette on a dime, or preferably a few hundred dollars, from pretty naif with a pout to jaded, do-it-all sex toy.
-Book Marks

Book Marks

A startling debut novel.... A distinctive coming-of-age story that poses thoughtful questions about the relationship between sex work and the creative process. A novel worth reading - for writers, whores, and everyone in between.
-Quill and Quire

Quill and Quire

Cox's tone, style and blunt depictions are similar to [Chuck] Palahniuk's. This does not suggest Cox's writing is derivative. Palahniuk - love him or hate him - is a contemporary force when it comes to brawling, bare-knuckled fiction these days. Cox, though, is a more compassionate writer - maybe it's the Canadian in him.
-The Danforth Review

Danforth Review

Shuck feels like a true story ... An amazing read. Highly recommended.
-Mundane Spiritus Mundi

Mundane Spiritus Mundi

The character Jaeven is shrewd, calculating, and utterly captivating. Like a male Holly Golightly, he manages to twist everyone around his little finger with a wink and a smile-or maybe a smirk and a pout.... Shuck is definitely a page-turner, which will surely make it a popular hit.
- Black Heart Magazine

Black Heart