Rated at: 4.0
A seventeen-year-old book blog offering book reviews and news about authors, publishers, bookstores, and libraries.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Long Home (1999)
The Long Home, William Gay’s 1999 debut novel is set in the deeply rural Tennessee of the 1940s, a time when most of its inhabitants were still isolated by a lack of automobiles and telephones. Amidst this isolation they often learned the hard way that local law enforcement officers were on the payroll of the highest bidder and that it was always best for a person to simply mind his own business and get on with his life rather than to try to right wrongs done to others. There could have been no more perfect an environment, of course, for someone with the nerve and the will to do whatever it took to profit at the expense of his neighbors.
Labels:
Reviews
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for the review, Sam! Looks like an interesting if a bit difficult (subject matter) read.
ReplyDeleteI have just discovered William Gay (and the Southern Gothic genre) as I picked up a copy of 'Twilight' which I thought was very good indeed.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it amazing how when you discover a new word or new writer or new place, suddenly it gets mentioned elsewhere? I'd never heard of Gay, then I read Twilight a week ago, and now here you are with a whole post on a book of his. Coincidence maybe, synchronicity maybe, but surprising definately!
I'll certainly be looking out for a copy of The Long Home now.
Carrie, Gay has definitely created a brutal world in this novel and it was a little painful to read about it at times, but what a writer this man is!
ReplyDeleteThat kind of thing seems to happen a lot, doesn't it, Herschelian? I've noticed the same thing. I'm very new to the man's work but just yesterday I was in my local Half-Price bookstore and found a brand new copy of another of his books that was published in the U.K. (as was the copy I reviewed earlier) called "Provinces of Night." This one was published there in 2001 and is his second novel, the follow-up to "The Long Home." I'm really happy to have discovered him...finally.
ReplyDelete