The Devil All the Time - Hardcover

Pollock, Donald Ray

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038553504X ISBN 13: 9780385535045

Publisher: Doubleday, 2011

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiff—called “powerful, remarkable, exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times—comes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree.

In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic over­tones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting.

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.

Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

About this title

Review

"Hits you like a telegram from Hell slid under your door at three o'clock in the morning" (William Gay, Author of Provinces of Night and The Long Home)

"Donald Ray Pollock redefines the term 'American Gothic', taking Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner and turning them up to 11...once you start reading it doesn’t let go" (Herald)

"One of the most adventurous and significant writers of our time ... If the Coen Brothers want their next Oscar they should buy the rights to this book now" (Scotland on Sunday)

"Terrifying ... an unsettling masterwork" (GQ)

"Superb" (The Times)

Book Description

A dark and riveting vision of America from the award-winning author of Knockemstiff. For fans of No Country for Old Men and Natural Born Killers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 038553504X
• ISBN 13: 9780385535045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 261