A few years ago (quite a few years ago, actually), I read William Gay's Provinces of Night and immediately declared him my favorite author. Though his published work includes only one previous novel (The Long Home) as well as countless short stories (many included in I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down), Provinces of Night is a near-perfect blend of McCarthy and Faulkner and left an indelible impression on me, to say the least.
The years have likely dulled my initial response (though it has long been my intent to re-read Provinces), but all those feelings came racing back as I began Gay's new book Twilight. It's twisted and dark from the get-go (you won't have to work too hard to reconcile that picture of Gay with his work), but much like my other favorite author of the moment Daniel Woodrell, Gay has an ear for time and place, and dialogue and description simply flow along like a creek in the woods.
I'll let you know later whether the plot lives up to the writing. It's slow going right now because reading time is a little limited right now, but maybe I'll have some time over Thanksgiving.
I've been juggling a number of books recently, with a number of new ones arriving this week. You should know I'm a notoriously slow reader, and it's always a crapshoot to see what I'll finish and what I won't.
First off, I just completed my fourth Daniel Woodrell novel of the year, a reading frenzy spurned on by his marvelous new book Winter's Bone. That book is still the champ, but a journey through his back catalog reveals a remarkable and developing talent. The one I just completed is Give Us A Kiss, one of his earlier books. I also recently polished off Tomato Red and The Death of Sweet Mister. Though Sweet Mister is the only one of the three that approaches the level of Winter's Bone, all of these books are worth checking out. However, I think the rights to some of these books are currently in limbo because I had to track down some out-of-print editions (Tomato Red was readily available in paperback, but also appears to be out-of-print). I'm pretty sure they will all be back in print very shortly as Winter's Bone has brought Woodrell a good deal of deserved attention.
I also just received the new Charles Frazier novel Thirteen Moons, the book that Random House plunked down $8.5 million to purchase. I'm just barely into it, but I've already pushed aside Lee Smith's On Agate Hill, which I'm sure I'll come back to though it's been slow getting into it. Frazier, of course, is the author of Cold Mountain and probably the closest thing we've got to a classical American master. So the wait for this book has been long and frenzied, but the reviews indicate it has been well worth it. Or you can wait for the movie - those rights were purchased for $3.5 million. That's a lot of cash for a dude that writes novels about the Civil War and mountain folk.
The new book from the newly prolific Cormac McCarthy arrived last week. I haven't yet dug into the post-apocalyptic world of The Road, but everyone says this is one of the best books of the year.
On the political front, I received Bob Woodward's new book State of Denial because I can't stand being out of the loop. I don't have any delusions that I'll finish that monster but I'll certainly check out the stuff that makes the Bush Administration look like a bunch of idiots. More exciting is the new Andrew Sullivan book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back. It will be released next week, and I've been looking forward to this for some time. Sullivan is one of the best thinkers anywhere on the political spectrum, and his writings on religious matters are some of the best and thoughtful out there. I've also been gnawing away at Damon Linker's The Theocons, a historical perspective on the rise of theocons and neocons on the American political landscape. Linker has some credibility as a former insider, but I think he gives way too much credit to the influence of radicals like Richard Neuhaus and his Catholic journal First Things. Interesting, but really dry.
So my brief list of recommendations is as follows:
I finished Daniel Woodrell's new novel Winter's Bone a while back - actually a few days after I received it - and was really dazzled. It has the pacing of a short story with all the fleshed out details of a novel. At about 200 pages, it's the shortest book I've read in a while, but it packs quite a punch.
I don't know if a plot summary would do you any good - essentially Ree Dolly sets out to find her missing father, who has supposedly jumped bail using their crappy little house as collateral. That puts the family's meager lives in danger, and Ree decides to find him - dead or alive. The setting is the Missouri Ozarks (where Woodrell is from), and I can't even tell you what decade the events take place. The bizarre backwoods subculture covers a lot of territory, including some strange local religious fables that are sprinkled across the narrative but (wisely) left to the reader's imagination to puzzle over the details.
Otherwise, the plot is razor sharp, without sacrificing the character of Ree, who is the strongest heroine I've read in a while. I feel pretty safe in calling this my favorite book this year. It's a quick read, which means it's gonna be a fantastic re-read when the weather turns chilly in the fall, a more appropriate setting for Winter's Bone.
(Read an excerpt and hear an interview with Woodrell here. Read about Woodrell in USA Today here - glad to see he's getting the attention he deservers.)
I also read Woodrell's Tomato Red on vacation and am working on The Death of Sweet Mister. Both are pretty awesome in their own right. Despite a high-profile Hollywood adaptation (Ang Lee's grossly underappreciated epic Ride With The Devil), Woodrell remains pretty obscure. I count him among my favorite novelists now. Interesting note: according to USA Today, locations are already being scouted for the film adaptation of Winter's Bone.
I'm also working on Tom Franklin's Smonk, which I was really jazzed about (loved his previous book Hell At The Breach). Unfortunately, it already reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which I recently put down about four-fifths of the way through because I just couldn't take any more nihilistic violence. I gotta keep slogging through Smonk because it's way too early to call it one way or the other, but so far I'm a bit disappointed.
