RTÉ News Editor Michael Good has been reading some of our American writers - here's his thoughts on Daniel Woodrell's latest book
"The Outlaw Album", a
collection of short stories by Daniel Woodrell is not for the squeamish or the faint
hearted.
Take the first story. Boshell can't stand his neighbour who he finds patronising and insulting. So he shoots him with a squirrel rifle and buries him under a pile of stones. As if that wasn't enough, he digs up the body and beats it with a stick. Then because he thinks the
corpse is sneering at him he sinks an axe into its chest and throws it down a disused well. His wife is completely indifferent to what he's done but is reduced to uncontrollable tears when her pet dog is found dead.
Or the young girl who takes revenge on the uncle who has repeatedly abused and raped her by sinking a pick axe into the back of his head, turning him into a vegetable who she can then torture. But she is the one who ends up caring for him as a helpless 200 pound baby.
The lives are sad and empty, the violence is savage and often gratuitous. There is a lot of blood. People aren't just shot - they are clubbed or stabbed. The writing is wonderful and strange. A hat is "crestfallen" and a cow is caught in a "sideways tree" after falling down a cliff.
Take the first story. Boshell can't stand his neighbour who he finds patronising and insulting. So he shoots him with a squirrel rifle and buries him under a pile of stones. As if that wasn't enough, he digs up the body and beats it with a stick. Then because he thinks the
corpse is sneering at him he sinks an axe into its chest and throws it down a disused well. His wife is completely indifferent to what he's done but is reduced to uncontrollable tears when her pet dog is found dead.
Or the young girl who takes revenge on the uncle who has repeatedly abused and raped her by sinking a pick axe into the back of his head, turning him into a vegetable who she can then torture. But she is the one who ends up caring for him as a helpless 200 pound baby.
The lives are sad and empty, the violence is savage and often gratuitous. There is a lot of blood. People aren't just shot - they are clubbed or stabbed. The writing is wonderful and strange. A hat is "crestfallen" and a cow is caught in a "sideways tree" after falling down a cliff.
Woodrell has rightly been compared to Cormac
McCarthy. Read one of the stories and you'll want to read them
all.
No comments:
Post a Comment