Goodnight, Nebraska Book

Can Tom McNeal write anything that doesn't take your breath away? I'm beginning to think not.

McNeal is reminiscent of both Faulkner and Steinbeck in that he combines accounts of terrible evil (all the more horrifying because often aleatory) with glimmering moments of glad grace, both delivered in spare but elegant prose. Yet unlike the feeling of repugnance that I get with Faulkner and Steinbeck (even while respecting their art), in the case of McNeal's writing, I come away from the reading experience feeling elevated. I find that I care even about characters who commit morally repugnant acts, because McNeal elucidates so well and so compassionately the inexorable forces that drive these characters, and the painful regret that threatens to drown them.

Under the guidance of McNeal's pen, Goodnight, a fictional small town in Nebraska, turns from pine-scented and crisp and burning-leaf-smokiness in the fall, to cold and grim and white in the winter, to buttery-yellow and brilliant green and full of hope in the spring. Likewise, the clear-eyed people who live there switch from wary to cruel to forgiving, often moving from one to the other in the blink of an eye. McNeal records it all with pinpoint clarity, so that by the time you finish the book, the characters feel so real to you that you are astounded that you will not be meeting them again the next day. And you find yourself - crazily - wondering how they will be getting on this day, since you know you won't be hearing from them.

Although this book is not related to McNeal's later book, "To Be Sung Underwater," I loved going back to this earlier one and seeing the ghostly outlines of his later characters Judith and Willy. Does it matter if you read them in or out of order? Not a bit: it just matters that you read them, because they are wonderful.

(see my full review at )