Daniel Woodrell – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE MAID’S VERSION by Daniel Woodrell /2013/the-maids-version-by-daniel-woodrell/ Sat, 21 Dec 2013 17:45:34 +0000 /?p=23615 Book Quote:

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 117 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS: Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

]]> THE OUTLAW ALBUM by Daniel Woodrell /2011/the-outlaw-album-by-daniel-woodrell/ Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:48:39 +0000 /?p=21940 Book Quote:

“There was a time I answer. It was a love that any daddy would have. But that was way back. If I love Cecil now it is like the way I love the Korean conflict. Something terrible I have lived through.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (NOV 1, 2011)

Daniel Woodrell is widely known for the movie adaptation of his novel, Winter’s Bone, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s Best Picture Prize in 2010. He has just published his first book of short stories, The Outlaw Album, a collection of twelve dark and riveting stories.

Desperation – both material and psychological– motivates his characters. There is an element of moral decay and hopelessness to these stories, most taking place in the rural area of the Ozarks. I found a certain similarity in theme to the great writer, Donald Ray Pollock. Both writers attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“The Echo of Neighborly Bones” is a haunting story of a man who murders his neighbor for killing his wife’s dog. Once his neighbor is dead, he kills him over and over again in different ways – as though his anger cannot be assuaged.

I found “Twin Forks” to be the most powerful story in the collection. It begins, “A cradle won’t hold my baby. My baby is two hundred pounds in a wheelchair and hard to push uphill but silent all the time. He can’t talk since his head got hurt, which I did to him. I broke into his head with a mattocks and he hasn’t said a thing to me nor nobody else since.” The baby is the narrator’s uncle, her mother’s brother. He is a serial rapist who the narrator catches raping a coed in the barn. The narrator, too, has been a victim of her uncle’s incestuous rapings. She beats his head in and then must care for him in his vegetative state. There comes a time when she realizes that even in a wheel chair and not talking, he remains evil.

“Florianne” is a haunting story of a man whose seventeen year-old daughter was kidnapped eleven years ago. His world is comprised of his trying to figure out who the kidnapper is. He suspects that it must be someone he knows or it could be anyone. His world is consumed by his suspicions.

In “Back Step,” Daren is at home recuperating from injuries he received in the war in the middle east. His mother is dying of cancer and Darden is plagued by memories of death and devastation that he witnessed. His big job at home is to kill a cow that has a broken leg, and then to dispose of the cow’s body by burning it.

“Night Stand” is one of the stronger stories in the collection. One night as Pelham and his wife lay asleep, a naked man appears at the foot of their bed growling. Pelham grabs a knife that happens to be on his night stand and stabs the growling man twice, killing him. He later finds out that that the man he killed is a disturbed veteran and also the son of a childhood friend. Pelham obsesses over the knife – how did it find its way to his night table?

“Two Things” is a powerful story. Cecil has been a bad egg all his life. Currently, he is in jail for thievery. He also has a history of violence. A woman who works with him in some educational or social work capacity in jail, visits Cecil’s father and shows him a book of poetry that Cecil has written. She believes that Cecil has a rare talent and wants Cecil’s father to allow Cecil to come home and live with him as part of his probation. Many of the poems are about crimes that Cecil has committed against his father. The woman believes that these rage-filled poems are amends for his wrong-doings. Cecil’s father isn’t quick to believe that Cecil has really changed and does not want Cecil living with him.

I enjoyed “Dream Spot” a lot and it still haunts me. Janet asks Dalyrimple to stop and pick up a female hitchhiker. As Dalyrimple prepares to do this, Janet begins to have delusions that this unknown woman is the love of Dalyrimple’s life. A simple act of picking up a hitchhiker leads to tragic consequences.

In “Returning the River,” a man on parole from jail burns down his neighbor’s house so that his dying father can regain his view of the river which the neighbor’s house has obscured.

The stories in this collection are raw and disturbing, leaving the reader with questions and a sense of being creeped out. They create goose bumps and a sense of uneasiness. The characters seem to have no moral center and are lost to what we think of as “normal.” Woodrell has a natural way of creating an ambiance of what it is like to be mentally ill or live outside the circle of normalcy.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 31 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 5, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

and

Bibliography:

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

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