While not as disappointing
as Tomato Red, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, the novel that made him sort of
famous, is a far cry from the power of The Death of Sweet Mister, but is least
interesting enough that it’s slim and quick 190 odd pages are just that. While
I think on a sentence for sentence basis, Woodrell is one of the best I have
seen, he seems to be lacking in a certain narrative drive that should create a
sense of urgency in books, especially dealing with the genre of country noir.
It is easy to get lost in his little nuggets of clever sentences and phrases,
but the stories that these sentences built have a very weak foundation and are
not as original as id like them to be. But do not underestimate the power of
some of Woodrell’s more impressive turns of phrasing. They are worth at least
half the book’s price. We meet Ree Dolly as her and her family are on their
last leg as far as their financial woes go, which is not helped by her father,
a known crank cook, has gone missing, and if he doesn’t show up for a scheduled
court date, Ree’s family is out of a house. Ree, a determined strong willed
female the likes of which I have rarely seen, goes off into the woods of the
famed Ozarks to find him, only to be confronted by the power and violence that blood
relations can bring. We meet a wide cast of characters, all with similar first
names, but they seem to blend together and I bet you won’t remember specific
ones after reading the book. A shocking act of violence will jar some readers
to plow through the final fifty pages, but this book leaves little proof of
Woodrell’s much touted abilities.
Rating: 4/5
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