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karlyo83's review against another edition
4.0
3.5* rounded up
TRIGGER WARNING: Animal abuse, alcoholism, racism and violence.
Harry Crews was an author from a different time and he writes a story that makes you think and feel. This is my first Harry Crews novel and it is definitely far removed from my usual style and books of choice. It wont be for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.
I can’t say I loved the story but I think that it is not a story to be loved. It made me feel the depths of depression that the main protagonist is feeling and it had all the Southern charm and grit smashed directly into you face.
Joe Lon Mackey is a former football star who has fallen from grace quite explicitly. He is married to a good woman but is abusive, he’s got two babies but he’s disinterested and he is a terrible alcoholic. This is a story of how Joe Lon slowly but surely begins to lose his sanity in a town that he will never leave and a life he was destined to live.
Set in Mystic, Georgia during the Rattlesnake Roundup there are mad characters in abundance and all of the events lead to a visceral culmination of Joe Lon’s eventual downfall.
There is no hand holding in this book, there are no set chapters and if you expect it to make sense all the way through then this book is not for you. There is no real start or finish, there is just a story on a page and it is told through the looking glass of the depths of despair.
If you are feeling even remotely down I recommend giving this one a miss.
As I said, this is not my usual book of choice and I didn’t love it but I don’t think you were supposed to. You can feel through the pages the oppressive heat, you can feel the danger in the air and you can sense the impending doom which does make it a bit of a masterpiece.
TRIGGER WARNING: Animal abuse, alcoholism, racism and violence.
Harry Crews was an author from a different time and he writes a story that makes you think and feel. This is my first Harry Crews novel and it is definitely far removed from my usual style and books of choice. It wont be for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.
I can’t say I loved the story but I think that it is not a story to be loved. It made me feel the depths of depression that the main protagonist is feeling and it had all the Southern charm and grit smashed directly into you face.
Joe Lon Mackey is a former football star who has fallen from grace quite explicitly. He is married to a good woman but is abusive, he’s got two babies but he’s disinterested and he is a terrible alcoholic. This is a story of how Joe Lon slowly but surely begins to lose his sanity in a town that he will never leave and a life he was destined to live.
Set in Mystic, Georgia during the Rattlesnake Roundup there are mad characters in abundance and all of the events lead to a visceral culmination of Joe Lon’s eventual downfall.
There is no hand holding in this book, there are no set chapters and if you expect it to make sense all the way through then this book is not for you. There is no real start or finish, there is just a story on a page and it is told through the looking glass of the depths of despair.
If you are feeling even remotely down I recommend giving this one a miss.
As I said, this is not my usual book of choice and I didn’t love it but I don’t think you were supposed to. You can feel through the pages the oppressive heat, you can feel the danger in the air and you can sense the impending doom which does make it a bit of a masterpiece.
elleestpartie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
eclaris's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Southern Gothic brought to its darkest, bitterest conclusion. Save for when you are used to the genre
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Excrement, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Suicide, Animal cruelty, Gore, Animal death, Blood, Classism, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Police brutality, Sexism, Infidelity, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Violence, and Hate crime
chaosofcold's review against another edition
3.75
This book is fucking grotesque. It’s rough and unashamedly brash. I don’t think I’ve read a book that speedruns pretty much every trigger possible in less than 300 pages but here we are.
I don’t regret reading this one, and I’ve never read anything quite like this as even McCarthy at his darkest offers a poetic charm that has been crudely scratched away here.
Gonna need a minute.
I don’t regret reading this one, and I’ve never read anything quite like this as even McCarthy at his darkest offers a poetic charm that has been crudely scratched away here.
Gonna need a minute.
lorene's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
mustafa_marwan's review against another edition
5.0
I don't mind dark stories. Well, I actually like them. It's very rare to come across a story that even I feel is too dark to recommend to anyone.
This is a story about the cancerous hope of trying to fix broken things. Snakes, sex, racism, amputated penises, and claustrophobic small ugly towns.
This is a story about the cancerous hope of trying to fix broken things. Snakes, sex, racism, amputated penises, and claustrophobic small ugly towns.
briandice's review against another edition
5.0
In one of his essays collected in [b:Blood and Grits|28326|Blood and Grits|Harry Crews|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1352663842l/28326._SY75_.jpg|28879] Harry Crews explains that there came a time when he was trying to write fiction that he realized, if he was going to be any good at his craft, that he had to stop pretending to be someone he wasn't and start writing about what he knew. Embrace his roots. There was plenty that Crews wished he had never experienced, but he didn't get to pick whether or not he grew up poor in Bacon County, Georgia. Because he decided to be true to his heritage, we readers get the opportunity to get a glimpse into a slice of his hell. Bare-knuckled, uneducated, violent and alcoholic hell. Going nowhere fast.
Joe Lon Mackey, the former All-American running back from Mystic, Georgia could be considered the protagonist of the story, but that would be a lie. The real protagonist of this book is Mystic itself - a backwater small town far enough away from Atlanta it may as well be Atlantis. Mystic hosts an annual Rattlesnake Roundup where people come from around the continent to fetch themselves some diamondbacks. This event plays as the backdrop to a host of local yokels, each potentially more fucked up than the next, with Joe Lon as the somewhat central star that calls their orbit. We watch Mackey's deterioration as the narrative unfolds; his withering alcoholism mirrors everyone else that has failed to escape Mystic. The town has a gravitational pull comprised of booze, easy sex and the halcyon recollection of youthful days. It circles its denizens with a pit of snakes, literally and figuratively, and the only hope one has of achieving an escape velocity is education. Crews writes in the third person omniscient about Joe Lon: He wished to God he could escape. But he didn't know where he could go or what he wanted to escape from. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. But if you must, there's a place for you here in Mystic.
I'm not going to pretend that this was easy to read. There is adultery, rape, murder, domestic violence, specific violence, general violence, dog fighting (along with a very, very specific and violent training regimen that makes it clear that Crews was exposed to this horrific event), mayhem. There are no likable characters (out of about a dozen). I was so shocked by the ending of this book I spent the afternoon talking about it with my wife and a friend. But this is how good Crews is, and why - as a reader that seeks the real - I am so happy that he chose years ago to embrace his past. I may be a son of the south, but I never knew Crews' people: Grits. And if he didn't write about the miserable existence of poor, alcoholic, uneducated, racist, violent and seemingly execrable humans - people that didn't choose to be born in that place and time, how would he ever be able to show that it was possible to rise above that scum to do better? Crews is the Doppelgänger of Joe Lon. He proves that you can get out, that life is better. And it doesn't have to end the way that this book did.
Joe Lon Mackey, the former All-American running back from Mystic, Georgia could be considered the protagonist of the story, but that would be a lie. The real protagonist of this book is Mystic itself - a backwater small town far enough away from Atlanta it may as well be Atlantis. Mystic hosts an annual Rattlesnake Roundup where people come from around the continent to fetch themselves some diamondbacks. This event plays as the backdrop to a host of local yokels, each potentially more fucked up than the next, with Joe Lon as the somewhat central star that calls their orbit. We watch Mackey's deterioration as the narrative unfolds; his withering alcoholism mirrors everyone else that has failed to escape Mystic. The town has a gravitational pull comprised of booze, easy sex and the halcyon recollection of youthful days. It circles its denizens with a pit of snakes, literally and figuratively, and the only hope one has of achieving an escape velocity is education. Crews writes in the third person omniscient about Joe Lon: He wished to God he could escape. But he didn't know where he could go or what he wanted to escape from. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. But if you must, there's a place for you here in Mystic.
I'm not going to pretend that this was easy to read. There is adultery, rape, murder, domestic violence, specific violence, general violence, dog fighting (along with a very, very specific and violent training regimen that makes it clear that Crews was exposed to this horrific event), mayhem. There are no likable characters (out of about a dozen). I was so shocked by the ending of this book I spent the afternoon talking about it with my wife and a friend. But this is how good Crews is, and why - as a reader that seeks the real - I am so happy that he chose years ago to embrace his past. I may be a son of the south, but I never knew Crews' people: Grits. And if he didn't write about the miserable existence of poor, alcoholic, uneducated, racist, violent and seemingly execrable humans - people that didn't choose to be born in that place and time, how would he ever be able to show that it was possible to rise above that scum to do better? Crews is the Doppelgänger of Joe Lon. He proves that you can get out, that life is better. And it doesn't have to end the way that this book did.
bookishghoulreads's review against another edition
1.0
I had to read this for a literature class, and hated every page. Seriously, this was just fucking terrible and a bore to get through.
Trigger warnings: blatant misogyny, racism and sexual a**ault.
Trigger warnings: blatant misogyny, racism and sexual a**ault.