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microbiologist's review against another edition
5.0
"There was some boy, there, in the dust, and I could not help him, for we were enemies."
This book, in my mind, seemed as if it was written as sort of a Biblical Scripture. It was a Biblical writing of American history. I've personally never been a big fan of the Bible, but I can certainly dig the writing style. It worked very well in this context. For example:
'And your father was considered mad by many for the way he moaned in his sleep, and the way he anticipated enemies in all the shadows of the buildings, and how he bayoneted behind curtains for “spies” and how he claimed, “No man may kill me by bullet alone” and of this, tangled rabble Abraham could only sigh, could only say, “We must use those instruments at hand” and thus they set out to annihilate the enemy.'
And this isn't just one unique paragraph, the entire book is laid out in such a fashion.
As I was reading this book, toward the middle I couldn't help but to wonder whether I loved or hated it. It is definitely not something you can just pick up and casually peruse. To paraphrase Sir Francis Bacon, this one is to be chewed and digested. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, as it is not a story in the direct fashion. It reminded me of the writing style of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, so if you like that sort of indirect storytelling style, you may very will digest this book as I certainly did.
This is a book that will definitely stick with me for a good long while. Book hangover. No more reading for me today.
This book, in my mind, seemed as if it was written as sort of a Biblical Scripture. It was a Biblical writing of American history. I've personally never been a big fan of the Bible, but I can certainly dig the writing style. It worked very well in this context. For example:
'And your father was considered mad by many for the way he moaned in his sleep, and the way he anticipated enemies in all the shadows of the buildings, and how he bayoneted behind curtains for “spies” and how he claimed, “No man may kill me by bullet alone” and of this, tangled rabble Abraham could only sigh, could only say, “We must use those instruments at hand” and thus they set out to annihilate the enemy.'
And this isn't just one unique paragraph, the entire book is laid out in such a fashion.
As I was reading this book, toward the middle I couldn't help but to wonder whether I loved or hated it. It is definitely not something you can just pick up and casually peruse. To paraphrase Sir Francis Bacon, this one is to be chewed and digested. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, as it is not a story in the direct fashion. It reminded me of the writing style of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, so if you like that sort of indirect storytelling style, you may very will digest this book as I certainly did.
This is a book that will definitely stick with me for a good long while. Book hangover. No more reading for me today.
mattleesharp's review against another edition
5.0
This book is quite a ride. At times brilliant historical fiction. At times an interesting reflection on ptsd. At times nearly incomprehensible experimental lit. This book is loaded with energy, creepy, and hard to put down. The writing is beautiful. Landscapes are conjured out of single sentences. The use of second person is an inspired way to keep the reader invested in a story with this many arms reaching out. This is a story that makes up an alternate history and forces you to believe it. Probably not for everyone, but if the blurb interested you at all, you'll want to give it a shot.
bwlane's review against another edition
4.0
Very good. I liked the poetic, rumbling rhythm of the prose's "And then..." and the second person was a delight. I was not expecting it to twist reality so much, and I was surprised by how baldly metaphorical much of it was. In some ways I would have preferred a book that used the same tone and language to address real events without shaping them so much.
All in all, a good read.
All in all, a good read.
shimmer's review against another edition
5.0
I read this as a manuscript, and yes the author's a friend, but this novel is honestly like nothing else you've ever read, in the very best possible way. It's a dusty, grimy, white-hot fever dream of American history in which you can practically smell the buffalo, and it will break both your heart and your head. I swear it on Lincoln's beard.
mdbow22's review
4.0
Robert Kloss writes more like a poet than a prose writer. It makes for a very surreal novel surrounding the beginnings of the Civil War through the invention of the TV. He creates a US that is full of intricacy, hate, insanity, and alligators. I feel like I will have to read it again to understand everything he did in this book. Even in this unpredictable novel, he did so much research for it that you have to believe the things that happen, whether they sound real or not. It's a shame Mud Luscious Press went out of business (you can still buy this novel, though), because I would pick up so many more of their books. Now I'm excited to see Kloss' collaboration with Amber Sparks in The Desert Spaces.
sheldonleecompton's review
5.0
This review originally appeared at Heavy Feather Review - http://heavyfeatherreview.com/2013/01/02/the-war-within-us-a-review-of-robert-kloss-the-alligators-of-abraham/
THE WAR WITHIN US
Now a voice spoke low from the face of the deep.
Rarely before have I read a first sentence from a book that so adequately set the tone for everything to follow than this opening sentence from Robert Kloss’ Alligators of Abraham. Of course the great openings we’ve all come to know so well spring to mind, if I might so bold as to make the comparison. And who’s to say this one may not well join those in time?
This voice from the “face of the deep” takes you by the ear and sits you down in the gloom of an ancient campfire and never eases its grip, and never, not ever, spares both the beautiful and the brutal details.
You could say this book is about the Civil War in part, about family relationships in part. But as Harry Crews so famously said, this is what happens in this remarkable novel. Crews would lean in close and perhaps say, yes, but what is this book about?
And the distinction is one of the most important aspects of truly effective literature. It seems Kloss has a unique understanding of this concept, giving us a historically-grounded novel that presents the “Brothers War” in superb prose and a three-book structure about loss and resurrection, about history, true history told from a timeless, all-seeing narrator who dares you to look away while the story rolls out in a series of “Ands” that never becomes labored.
If you’ll indulge me a somewhat lengthy series of quoted paragraphs, allow me the pleasure of sharing Kloss’ use of “Ands” to create a rolling thundertrain of storytelling.
And we begin in the miles of their construction, of digging with peeled backs and brows, with spades and pickaxes and shovels, and the lines of wagons obscured for the dust they inspired, the clouds that seemed a warning or a foreboding and arrived with tins of peaches, of beef and ham, of beans and beets, with shovels and beams and guns and tarpaulin and miles of wire, spooled.
And those men were called brutes when they worked with vigor, and they were called dogs when they lagged. Those men lashed until their backs striped with blood while the others stood by with sullen eyes. “Let this be a lesson to you men,” it was said by officers who spat into the blood pools, “I will not indulge your idleness.” Those lines of bloody sneering men, those men of your generations, those men of your father’s generations, and those generations long prior, and those generations ever after.
And when the distant smoke spiraled and flickered in the waves of heat, there was a man who told your father, “The bastards are smoking us out” and by this he meant the natives would burn them to death. Your father who obscured the sun with his hand and saw nothing but smoke, and yet he felt wise in those moments, saying, “New life is born from the fires of the plain.”
And in the dust of once mountains and the ashes of prairies fled the dusty figures of your fathers, their marches along those smoldered roads and valleys, your fathers tanned by the dust as if men of leather, their eyes alone, winking and alive.
This energy Kloss has caught like bottled lightning never lets up over the course of the entire book. A combination of what must have been exhaustive period research and then the level of deftly executed prose, sentences so carefully crafted, is this novel’s heart, the conduit through which Kloss unfolds a tale unlike anything I’ve yet read and rarely enjoyed so thoroughly.
At times, I thought of my father, a Civil War buff who kept pictures of Robert E. Lee (we are from the South after all) on the walls of his bedroom and countless books on the subject scattered across his bed, on nightstands, the floor. I went into Alligators of Abraham wondering if there could possibly be a story, fact or fiction, which could engage me considering the level of exposure I had been subjected to from my old man.
Those concerns were put to rest as the novel unfolded and became, among other things, about a father and son, and a tragic father at that, fallen from some grace in the distant past and transformed into a grieving shadow of his once strong self by loss and the search for eternal life in the most fascinating means imaginable. I related in the most profound way possible.
Alligators of Abraham is an ambitious novel that does not disappoint, with Kloss stripping the paint from the canvas of history with a fluid but respectful hand to somehow retell the story of us all anew and with an honesty both refreshing and entertaining.
THE WAR WITHIN US
Now a voice spoke low from the face of the deep.
Rarely before have I read a first sentence from a book that so adequately set the tone for everything to follow than this opening sentence from Robert Kloss’ Alligators of Abraham. Of course the great openings we’ve all come to know so well spring to mind, if I might so bold as to make the comparison. And who’s to say this one may not well join those in time?
This voice from the “face of the deep” takes you by the ear and sits you down in the gloom of an ancient campfire and never eases its grip, and never, not ever, spares both the beautiful and the brutal details.
You could say this book is about the Civil War in part, about family relationships in part. But as Harry Crews so famously said, this is what happens in this remarkable novel. Crews would lean in close and perhaps say, yes, but what is this book about?
And the distinction is one of the most important aspects of truly effective literature. It seems Kloss has a unique understanding of this concept, giving us a historically-grounded novel that presents the “Brothers War” in superb prose and a three-book structure about loss and resurrection, about history, true history told from a timeless, all-seeing narrator who dares you to look away while the story rolls out in a series of “Ands” that never becomes labored.
If you’ll indulge me a somewhat lengthy series of quoted paragraphs, allow me the pleasure of sharing Kloss’ use of “Ands” to create a rolling thundertrain of storytelling.
And we begin in the miles of their construction, of digging with peeled backs and brows, with spades and pickaxes and shovels, and the lines of wagons obscured for the dust they inspired, the clouds that seemed a warning or a foreboding and arrived with tins of peaches, of beef and ham, of beans and beets, with shovels and beams and guns and tarpaulin and miles of wire, spooled.
And those men were called brutes when they worked with vigor, and they were called dogs when they lagged. Those men lashed until their backs striped with blood while the others stood by with sullen eyes. “Let this be a lesson to you men,” it was said by officers who spat into the blood pools, “I will not indulge your idleness.” Those lines of bloody sneering men, those men of your generations, those men of your father’s generations, and those generations long prior, and those generations ever after.
And when the distant smoke spiraled and flickered in the waves of heat, there was a man who told your father, “The bastards are smoking us out” and by this he meant the natives would burn them to death. Your father who obscured the sun with his hand and saw nothing but smoke, and yet he felt wise in those moments, saying, “New life is born from the fires of the plain.”
And in the dust of once mountains and the ashes of prairies fled the dusty figures of your fathers, their marches along those smoldered roads and valleys, your fathers tanned by the dust as if men of leather, their eyes alone, winking and alive.
This energy Kloss has caught like bottled lightning never lets up over the course of the entire book. A combination of what must have been exhaustive period research and then the level of deftly executed prose, sentences so carefully crafted, is this novel’s heart, the conduit through which Kloss unfolds a tale unlike anything I’ve yet read and rarely enjoyed so thoroughly.
At times, I thought of my father, a Civil War buff who kept pictures of Robert E. Lee (we are from the South after all) on the walls of his bedroom and countless books on the subject scattered across his bed, on nightstands, the floor. I went into Alligators of Abraham wondering if there could possibly be a story, fact or fiction, which could engage me considering the level of exposure I had been subjected to from my old man.
Those concerns were put to rest as the novel unfolded and became, among other things, about a father and son, and a tragic father at that, fallen from some grace in the distant past and transformed into a grieving shadow of his once strong self by loss and the search for eternal life in the most fascinating means imaginable. I related in the most profound way possible.
Alligators of Abraham is an ambitious novel that does not disappoint, with Kloss stripping the paint from the canvas of history with a fluid but respectful hand to somehow retell the story of us all anew and with an honesty both refreshing and entertaining.
maniereads's review
4.0
I am disturbed by this book. It is the most unsettling Civil War story I've ever encountered. I don't really want to give too much away except that the imagery is creepy, disgusting, brutal, powerful. The language is hypnotic. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
Quick, someone else read it so we can talk about it!
Quick, someone else read it so we can talk about it!
hilaritas's review
5.0
A brutal read that develops a hypnotic incantatory power through the rhythm of its second person language. Heartbreaking, horrifying, and highly recommended. My only complaint is the unbelievable number of times the word "tarpaulin" appears in the book.
mattleesharp's review
5.0
This book is quite a ride. At times brilliant historical fiction. At times an interesting reflection on ptsd. At times nearly incomprehensible experimental lit. This book is loaded with energy, creepy, and hard to put down. The writing is beautiful. Landscapes are conjured out of single sentences. The use of second person is an inspired way to keep the reader invested in a story with this many arms reaching out. This is a story that makes up an alternate history and forces you to believe it. Probably not for everyone, but if the blurb interested you at all, you'll want to give it a shot.
luiscorrea's review
4.0
The American Civil War as a biblical myth about mortality, national mania, and violence. Probably the closest a work of fiction could be to poetry without being called a "novel in verse." I don't think I totally grasped the semblance of a plot or its characters, but I was whisked away by the language and imagery. Fortunately, its compact package lends itself to a rereading.
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