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A review by jamesdanielhorn
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
4.0
A low down dirty romp in the grit lit sack. I enjoyed the hell out of Tomato Red, and I’m not totally sure why. The characters felt very real to me. Maybe I’ve just been around enough people like this to know them, or maybe I see myself in them, but regardless, I really felt immersed in their world. This is where Woodrell truly succeeds here.
The book does have a couple of minor flaws keeping it from reaching classic status, particularly the descriptions of sex, which felt goofy to me, and a few sentences made me cringe, but I chalked them up to the narrator’s personality, and moved right along.
The book has been described as tragicomic by other reviewers, but I did not find much humor about it; it’s mostly bleak with some touching moments, and a sprinkle of brutality. Ultimately this mix made me want to read other books in Daniel Woodrell’s oeuvre, in hopes of finding more of what I had here. Read it if the above sounds appealing and you’ve got the stomach some depravity.
The book does have a couple of minor flaws keeping it from reaching classic status, particularly the descriptions of sex, which felt goofy to me, and a few sentences made me cringe, but I chalked them up to the narrator’s personality, and moved right along.
The book has been described as tragicomic by other reviewers, but I did not find much humor about it; it’s mostly bleak with some touching moments, and a sprinkle of brutality. Ultimately this mix made me want to read other books in Daniel Woodrell’s oeuvre, in hopes of finding more of what I had here. Read it if the above sounds appealing and you’ve got the stomach some depravity.