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A review by mikedeab63
Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin
4.0
For me this book falls firmly into the category of: very happy to have read, but quite happy to never read again. This is a visceral, violent book that gives equal weight to both sides of the conflict and where rarely does a body appear on the page without a purpose, but it doesn't make the blood and deaths any easier to take.
Franklin doesn't shrink from presenting the dire living conditions and tenuous lifestyles of those that live on the fringes of society and he takes his time (almost the first three quarters of the book demonstrating it). It reminded me most of Woodrell's Winter's Bone in its depiction of the clannishness nature of the rural poor and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men in its lament of being unable to understand what the world was becoming.
Franklin also doesn't make any of the characters larger than life. Everyone feels very natural and the two main protagonists are chosen carefully to give the reader insight into two sides of the conflict and each character is drawn exceedingly well (though the Sheriff does seem to dissolve into drink pretty quickly).
The last one hundred pages of so falls more in line with genre conventions (and one could argue is better for it at least in terms of narrative push) in setting up the final clash between the two sides and sorting out the aftermath for our characters.
One could read into this turn of the century tale of poor rural folk versus burgeoning, affluent town's people as a larger allegory to the us-versus-them post 9/11 world. You could also just read it is a historical thriller where morality falls away in the form of madness.
Franklin doesn't shrink from presenting the dire living conditions and tenuous lifestyles of those that live on the fringes of society and he takes his time (almost the first three quarters of the book demonstrating it). It reminded me most of Woodrell's Winter's Bone in its depiction of the clannishness nature of the rural poor and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men in its lament of being unable to understand what the world was becoming.
Franklin also doesn't make any of the characters larger than life. Everyone feels very natural and the two main protagonists are chosen carefully to give the reader insight into two sides of the conflict and each character is drawn exceedingly well (though the Sheriff does seem to dissolve into drink pretty quickly).
The last one hundred pages of so falls more in line with genre conventions (and one could argue is better for it at least in terms of narrative push) in setting up the final clash between the two sides and sorting out the aftermath for our characters.
One could read into this turn of the century tale of poor rural folk versus burgeoning, affluent town's people as a larger allegory to the us-versus-them post 9/11 world. You could also just read it is a historical thriller where morality falls away in the form of madness.