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sirisolh's review against another edition
3.0
I wasn't sure if I should give it three or four stars, but somehow I ended up with three: it's brutal, horrible, sad, and even the sweetest story ends up heartbreaking and destructive.
What I liked especially good, was how the stories are linked together. They didn't have to be, the book would've been equally good if the stories were independent and unrelated, but it became a whole other read when the past or future of characters was revealed in different stories and hence presented the complete destruction of life from childhood to retirement. As I read a translated version, I cannot comment upon Bill's language, but the translator should absolutely be given credit for how his chosen phrases enhances the dreadful and disrespectful behaviour and language throughout the whole book. At certain times, I could almost feel the stab wounds on my own body as I flipped the pages. That being said, there's quite a similarity between the characters and plot in the different stories - it's a strenght in keeping the thread throughout the book, but also a weakness in it sometimes being a bit to easy to see what's coming. Few characters show complexity in personality, but then I assume the stories aren't meant to show more than the momentarily cause - effect/reaction to the situation, not making it a notable weakness in my opinion.
It's definitely worth a read, but I need a break from destruction before following up with Donnybrook.
What I liked especially good, was how the stories are linked together. They didn't have to be, the book would've been equally good if the stories were independent and unrelated, but it became a whole other read when the past or future of characters was revealed in different stories and hence presented the complete destruction of life from childhood to retirement. As I read a translated version, I cannot comment upon Bill's language, but the translator should absolutely be given credit for how his chosen phrases enhances the dreadful and disrespectful behaviour and language throughout the whole book. At certain times, I could almost feel the stab wounds on my own body as I flipped the pages. That being said, there's quite a similarity between the characters and plot in the different stories - it's a strenght in keeping the thread throughout the book, but also a weakness in it sometimes being a bit to easy to see what's coming. Few characters show complexity in personality, but then I assume the stories aren't meant to show more than the momentarily cause - effect/reaction to the situation, not making it a notable weakness in my opinion.
It's definitely worth a read, but I need a break from destruction before following up with Donnybrook.
bundy23's review against another edition
3.0
100MPH violence from start to finish. By around halfway through I was a completly over all the rape, murder, torture, rape, incest, kidnapping, drugs, rape, more murder, more torture, another rape... It was just all too much. 3 stars is generous but 2 would've been mean.
erincharp's review against another edition
4.0
This is rough and bleak and paints Southern Indiana like the wild West, but with more meth. I wouldn't say it's too far from the truth. Gone are the days of blue collar factory workers voting Democrat and here are the days of unemployment collecting, meth making, MAGA people. This isn't to say that all of Southern Indiana is like this. It isn't. I went to college in Southern Indiana and loved the community and the culture, but for all intents purposes, Indiana is now a southern state and no longer keeping up with the rest of the midwest in terms of employment and education. I don't know that it is as violence fueled as this book purports, but I do know it is just about as bleak. Some of these stories were so graphic that it was difficult to read, but the author certainly didn't tiptoe around real life issues of drugs and poverty.
binxthinx's review against another edition
2.0
Trashy book with occasional pretentious attempts at being literary. I don’t mind violent, dark books, but this is just a tedious slog of short stories. The men are all rapists or drunks or junkies. They love to beat women and knock up younger relatives. The women are redneck trailer trash. The children watch it happen and eventually grow up to hurt someone in turn. Someone wrongs someone and the law is useless so the only solution is a vengeful murderous rampage. Characters recur but are so unlikeable and interchangeable that you can’t bother to care. Everyone is a stereotype with nothing that makes them stand out. You could say it’s supposed to show cycles or how hard it is to get out of senseless violence but mostly it’s just pulpy garbage that doesn’t say anything interesting or new. There are a few short stories that do something a bit different (but of course there’s still heaps of graphic violence), but they’re few and far between. The only attempts at fleshing out people is giving them PTSD to justify their mental illness and actions. I lost track how many PTSD-stricken abusers and murderers are in this book. Most stories are like “backstory, details about strained relationships or drinking/mental illness problems, wrong, and then drawn out violence that often begets more violence.” This author is also horrible with “show don’t tell” and has some very frustrating style fallbacks. I’m not sure what the point of this book was, but at least it’s a quick read.
wallacha4's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
adammck's review against another edition
1.0
Unrelentingly tedious hillbilly pulp. Like the bloody bits of Tarantino but not the talky chunks? Want to like Woodrell but find him too high-falutin? C'mon down! Two-dimensional and one-dimensional characters trapped in a setting that's way more cartoonish than Gotham or Metropolis. Reminiscent of the kid in the creative writing workshop who can't write his way out of a short story without a death or beating. Contrived stabs at shock value, with half-baked stories like "Granpappy sells lil granddaughter to the evil drugs-n-pimps gang! Can you believe it?! Crazy, right?!" The general theme is "desperate people are capable of terrible things" - and that's as deep as the investigation goes. Which may be fine - after all, the author is writing in a time-honored style that is the literary equivalent of the popcorn movie. No harm there. But the necessary momentum and pacing, the suspense, the emotional involvement, the evocative turns of phrase... just not there. Instead. A few clipped non-sentences like someone just discovered Cormac McCarthy. The disappointment.
sarah1984's review against another edition
5.0
23/4 - I've never read anything like it, just as the inside front cover predicted. It's nothing like what I was expecting either. It doesn't really have a blub anywhere on the book, so from the title and front cover image I was expecting either true crime or horror revolving around isolated farms owned by families of inbred yokels who practice cannibalism on the unlucky who break down in their hunting territory. Crimes in Southern Indiana is nothing like either of those possibilities. I've read about eight stories so far, and some of them have been connected to each other, kind of like continuing chapters from the same book, while others have been standalone. There is a lot of very graphic violence and disturbing situations - not for children or the squeamish. It's also not what I would consider required reading if you're intent on making a visit to Southern Indiana, this book is more likely to scare you away (especially from the people) rather than encourage you to plan your holiday. To be continued...
25/4 - As it's ANZAC day and this is my only review for the day I would like to ask everyone reading this to pause for a minute of silence in honour of all the men and women who fought for our safety and freedom. For me personally I think of my great-grandfathers and grandfather who fought at Gallipoli, the Western Front, and Papua New Guinea respectively through both world wars.
Back to the review. Please, if Crimes in Southern Indiana is anywhere close to the truth of life in the 'heartland' of America, don't tell me. I don't want to know that this is life for people living in the so called 'lucky country'. The stories in this book paint a very bleak picture of Southern Indiana. So far, all bar one story have featured people shooting each other with a wide variety of guns, some I haven't even heard of. Most of the gun violence is in revenge for earlier slights against a person or family, an eye for an eye is the real law out there in the 'heartland', the police haven't got a chance and often followed the idea of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. To be continued...
27/4 - With my last post (since I've finished the book) I've got to give you a sample of some of the spectacularly evocative language featured in Crimes in Southern Indiana:
Pitchfork and Darnell burst through the scuffed motel door like a two barrels of buckshot.
First sentence of the first page of the first story, Hill Clan Cross, in the book.
The opening paragraph continues with:
Using the daisy-patterned bed to divide the dealers from the buyers, Pitchfork buried a .45-caliber Colt in Karl's peat moss unibrow with his right hand. Separated Irvine's green eyes with the sawed-off 12-gauge in his left, pushed the two young men away from the mattress, stopped them at a wall painted with nicotine, and shouted, "Drop the rucks, Karl!"
Immediately, the words grabbed me and I could see, just so clearly, the picture the words were painting. In my recent review of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian I called into question the way it was written - sentenceless, mostly punctuationless, littered with highfalutin words most readers don't understand and scatterings of Spanish that a non-Spanish speaker can't read - despite the many reviewers calling it beautifully written. I found the paragraph from Crimes in Southern Indiana far more compelling. That's the kind of writing I was expecting from such a highly regarded author of so many years experience, but I didn't get it from the experienced author, I got it from Frank Bill, the largely unknown, first time author. Interesting, isn't it? Something to think about.
25/4 - As it's ANZAC day and this is my only review for the day I would like to ask everyone reading this to pause for a minute of silence in honour of all the men and women who fought for our safety and freedom. For me personally I think of my great-grandfathers and grandfather who fought at Gallipoli, the Western Front, and Papua New Guinea respectively through both world wars.
Back to the review. Please, if Crimes in Southern Indiana is anywhere close to the truth of life in the 'heartland' of America, don't tell me. I don't want to know that this is life for people living in the so called 'lucky country'. The stories in this book paint a very bleak picture of Southern Indiana. So far, all bar one story have featured people shooting each other with a wide variety of guns, some I haven't even heard of. Most of the gun violence is in revenge for earlier slights against a person or family, an eye for an eye is the real law out there in the 'heartland', the police haven't got a chance and often followed the idea of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. To be continued...
27/4 - With my last post (since I've finished the book) I've got to give you a sample of some of the spectacularly evocative language featured in Crimes in Southern Indiana:
Pitchfork and Darnell burst through the scuffed motel door like a two barrels of buckshot.
First sentence of the first page of the first story, Hill Clan Cross, in the book.
The opening paragraph continues with:
Using the daisy-patterned bed to divide the dealers from the buyers, Pitchfork buried a .45-caliber Colt in Karl's peat moss unibrow with his right hand. Separated Irvine's green eyes with the sawed-off 12-gauge in his left, pushed the two young men away from the mattress, stopped them at a wall painted with nicotine, and shouted, "Drop the rucks, Karl!"
Immediately, the words grabbed me and I could see, just so clearly, the picture the words were painting. In my recent review of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian I called into question the way it was written - sentenceless, mostly punctuationless, littered with highfalutin words most readers don't understand and scatterings of Spanish that a non-Spanish speaker can't read - despite the many reviewers calling it beautifully written. I found the paragraph from Crimes in Southern Indiana far more compelling. That's the kind of writing I was expecting from such a highly regarded author of so many years experience, but I didn't get it from the experienced author, I got it from Frank Bill, the largely unknown, first time author. Interesting, isn't it? Something to think about.
screamdogreads's review
4.0
For a long time, I was on the fence about this novel, never having read anything by this author before, and not really having heard much about him, either. I was convinced to pick it up, however, by seeing how many authors had blurbed this book that I either loved, or had on my radar. I figured, this has to be something I'll like, right?
I was right. Not only did I have a fantastic time with this book, but I utterly lost myself within this book. Essentially, this is a deconstructed novel that takes the form of several short stories. Each story overlaps with another, and eventually things come full circle. In that sense, it's similar to Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock.
Though the title of this book is very fitting, it could also be called 'everyone dies in a gruesome yet entertaining fashion'. Seriously, if you like any of the characters in this book, just... Don't. They probably won't make it. With a body count higher than most action flicks, this novel takes the usual violence found in the grit-lit genre, dials it up to eleven, and then keeps going. Pretty much everyone drops in this book. It was actually surprising that anyone was left alive by the end.
Really, this is an absolutely stunning collection, told with a grotesque vividity that had me taking several breaks to process what I had just read.
I was right. Not only did I have a fantastic time with this book, but I utterly lost myself within this book. Essentially, this is a deconstructed novel that takes the form of several short stories. Each story overlaps with another, and eventually things come full circle. In that sense, it's similar to Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock.
Though the title of this book is very fitting, it could also be called 'everyone dies in a gruesome yet entertaining fashion'. Seriously, if you like any of the characters in this book, just... Don't. They probably won't make it. With a body count higher than most action flicks, this novel takes the usual violence found in the grit-lit genre, dials it up to eleven, and then keeps going. Pretty much everyone drops in this book. It was actually surprising that anyone was left alive by the end.
Really, this is an absolutely stunning collection, told with a grotesque vividity that had me taking several breaks to process what I had just read.
drewsof's review against another edition
4.0
A solid collection of delightfully messed-up stories. Some of them might turn your stomach, some of them might make you laugh so hard you cry - and some of them might do both in the space of a single story. Bill is a unique voice, the way he brings humor into otherwise serious moments. It's what distinguishes him from the others working in similar genres, like Donald Ray Pollack or Daniel Woodrell, and it's what make him such a livewire of an author. Reading this gave me joy as I recalled moments of sheer craziness from Donnybrook and actually, in light of the info I've heard about the impending sequel to that book, makes me think even more highly of it than I did. I am a fan; I can't wait to see what batshit insanity comes next.
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/11/26/crimes-in-southern-indiana/
More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/11/26/crimes-in-southern-indiana/