Jeremy's Version Book

I have the strange sensation of having just watched TV.

There's a kind of claustrophobic world here with people of all ages careening towards madness but somehow keeping to the daily drudgery of human tasks like laundry, meals, gardens. You endure a string of conversations, then something lurid and explosive happens.

The portraits are varied and interesting. There's Jethro, 14 year old survivor of grievous injury to head and neck writing in his accusatory journal and Winifred of sinewy arms who "should have been a man".

As much as I was disturbed by the violence in Daniel Woodrell's Woe the Live On....here the blood-shed seemed more like entertainment. Kind of like the veneer that TV puts on drama. Or the bracing fisticuffs of a youthful night on the town. Strange.

This book grew on me about half way through'I began to enjoy the emotional outbursts, petty violence, long faces, pouting, plotting, shocking events. I can certainly understand why Purdy is a favorite of John Waters. Lurid, yes. But served up with some psychological meat and potatoes.