** OK **
Tournament of Books : 2014
Sadly mesmerising
Both charms and unnerves
This is not mainstream stroytelling, certainly a road less travelled. It is prose stripped back to bare essentials. It is full of ugliness. You somehow feel dirty just looking in on the narrative.
The calmness of pace and language set up an inner vibration of trepidation. It is hauntingly honest with characters that, at first, seem stereotyped, but, at their dark heart, are well crafted and intimately nuanced. The West Virginia setting resonates. The devastation of the local environment is mirrored in the devastation of innocence.
Hill William = hill bill(y) (As one Goodreads reviewer said "lipstick on a pig")
