The Devil All the Time - Softcover

Pollock, Donald Ray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846555418 ISBN 13: 9781846555411

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2011

Synopsis

The Devil All the Time is a hauntingly intense portrait of America and a shattering vision of violence and redemption.

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, it follows a cast of riveting and bizarre characters from the end of the Second World War to the 1960s.

Willard Russell is a tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific who can't save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from a slow death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his 'prayer log'. Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, trawl America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. The spider-handling preacher Roy, and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, are 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 plot lines into a taut, gothic 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' in his debut novel, taking Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner and turning them up to 11... The Devil All the Time is a very dark slice of Americana." (The Herald)

"Like being dragged backwards through a briar patch by William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor while Nick Cave howls hosannahs at a blood-black moon... Spider-gobbling revivalists, kick-back sheriffs, sideshow freaks, perfidious preachers - all are present and most incorrect...You can taste the metal in the water and the tang of decay in the fetid air." (Time Out)

"[Pollock] has an extraordinarily brutal yet tender insight into the lives of his characters. Superb." (The Times)

"It is [a] profound and moving kind of book; it is a bruise-black slice of Midwest gothic, and confirms Pollock as one of the most adventurous and significant writers of our time... The Devil All the Time is bleak, and plangent, and horrific; but it is also faultlessly written, emotionally compelling and intellectually serious. In the hands of a writer of genius, even as frequently stale a form as 'dirty realism' can shine and expand. If the Coen Brothers want their next Oscar they should buy the rights to this book now" (Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday)

Book Description

A dark and riveting vision of America from the award-winning author of Knockemstiff

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846555418
• ISBN 13: 9781846555411
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272