World’s End was published by Viking in 1987 and won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The novel traces three families — the Van Brunts (Dutch tenant farmers), the Van Warts (their patroon landlords), and the Cranes (Yankees who arrived later) — through three historical periods: the seventeenth-century Dutch colonial era, the 1940s during and after World War II, and the late 1960s. Each generation repeats, with variation, the betrayals and conflicts of the previous ones.
The novel is Boyle’s most structurally ambitious: the tripled timeline creates patterns of recurrence that suggest history is neither progressive nor cyclical but something more troubling — a series of variations on themes of exploitation, betrayal, and doomed resistance. The Hudson Valley setting (Boyle grew up in Peekskill, New York) gives the book a geographical specificity that grounds its historical sweep.
The PEN/Faulkner Award established Boyle’s literary credentials beyond the suspicion of mere entertainers that his comic exuberance sometimes attracted.
The Hudson Valley
Boyle grew up in Peekskill, New York, in the heart of the Hudson Valley that the novel chronicles. The landscape — the river, the Catskill escarpment, the old Dutch place names — is rendered with a native’s familiarity. The novel is his most autobiographically rooted, even though none of the characters resemble Boyle himself.
Collecting World’s End
First edition (Viking, New York, 1987): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $100–$250
- Very good: $40–$100
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. The PEN/Faulkner Award gives this novel particular prestige among collectors.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the PEN/Faulkner Award? The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is the largest peer-judged literary prize in the United States, awarded annually since 1981 by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Winners include Philip Roth, E. Annie Proulx, and Ha Jin. Boyle won in 1988 for World’s End.