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angus_mckeogh's review
1.0
This book pulls off an amazing feat. It's somehow too wordy yet never has enough information to figure out exactly what's happening. Moreover, it's pretty short but reads like a 1,500 page omnibus. Terrible! Skip it!
alisonjfields's review
5.0
Well, that was weird and hilarious and disturbing. Pretty much everything I expect out of the late Barry Hannah. "Yonder Stands Your Orphan" is a doughnut fois gras bacon cheeseburger of a southern Gothic. It's probably not good for you, but it's delicious and disgusting and a more than a smidge transgressive.
katzreads's review
1.0
Disjointed, minimal plot, introduces new characters without enough context to figure out who they are or how they connect to other characters. Gave up after about70 pages. I'm too old to read books I don't enjoy.
liberrydude's review
3.0
The initial going was slow and you kept reading to see what craziness was about to ensue. I kept confusing many of the characters who had names beginning with M. Also, I should have made a flow chart of the strange and twisted relationships. What a collection of lost quirky souls! Funny, disturbing, and profound at times. I can see why Hannah is compared to Faulkner. If this were a movie it would be like Twin Peaks meets Deliverance. I wonder what the boys at Lynyrd Skynyrd would have to say to Hannah about his satire of Southern men and the world they inhabit? Will definitely read his short stories. He died last year and had a book published within the past month. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/books/review/Taylor-t.html?_r=1&ref=review
purrito620's review
1.0
Could not finish this book. The plot was interesting but executed poorly. I couldn't identify with any of the characters. Too many words on philosophies, viewpoints, and setting and unable to hold my attention. The writing ran every which way, with hardly any focus. The story would jump from character to character randomly and suddenly. I made it about halfway through the book and not much has happened at all. Had to put this one down, and I rarely ever give up on a book. I simply stopped caring about the story line, and I didn't care about any of the characters to begin with.
nicka's review against another edition
3.0
You ever finish a book and say to yourself 'huh, maybe i missed something.' Because really, at the risk of offending those that really really like this book, I simply don't get it. The novel doesn't confuse me, just the praise it has received. Because I enjoyed the first 1/3 and then it just seemed too meandering, too unfocused, too ephemeral in all the wrong ways. The writing isn't lacking, and-again, perhaps I am wrong-there is a host of interesting characters, but for those compliments the thing is....this books doesn't really go anywhere. There I said it. Nice dialogue-Hannah excels at writing some great vernacular-strewn dialogue-and this has an interesting setting, too. But.not.much.happens. At all. And I can forgive that. I loved the Orchard Keeper by McCarthy that often received the same complaint. But, Mr. Hannah, you are no Cormac McCarthy. (But in your defense, I don't perceive that you think you are anyway.)
jamiereadthis's review against another edition
4.0
I needed something batshit crazy and bighearted, and there’s nobody better for both than Barry Hannah. My favorite when reading him is to forget— just for a minute, just long enough— all the ongoing story and pick a line, any line, to marvel at the mini-story packed inside it.
“Lightning loved the swamp. The willows thrashed now where all the souls of dead bad poets roamed day and night.”
“Spanish words, Japanese thoughts, for these elves of Confederate trash.”
“Here was a man who in his bad, bad days had almost blown Roman over on a gravel road riding his giant Harley next to Roman’s little motorbike, loaded with fish. Now a Christian orator when he was not playing hooky from the Anonymous program.”
“Some things were sin and the others just math.”
A million stories for one, these screwy sentences that ring with drop-dead truth. You could pick a page blind, point and find one. Here. Page 181. “‘Nice,’ said Carl Bob Feeney, less insane than last week.”
“Lightning loved the swamp. The willows thrashed now where all the souls of dead bad poets roamed day and night.”
“Spanish words, Japanese thoughts, for these elves of Confederate trash.”
“Here was a man who in his bad, bad days had almost blown Roman over on a gravel road riding his giant Harley next to Roman’s little motorbike, loaded with fish. Now a Christian orator when he was not playing hooky from the Anonymous program.”
“Some things were sin and the others just math.”
A million stories for one, these screwy sentences that ring with drop-dead truth. You could pick a page blind, point and find one. Here. Page 181. “‘Nice,’ said Carl Bob Feeney, less insane than last week.”
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