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tarrowood's review against another edition
4.0
A solid read. Rated more for enjoyment and the story than the complexity. Ron Rash’s story is vivid and compelling, and forces you to grapple with real feelings. A backwoods Bildungsroman makes for an intriguing story, and it’s ties to history of the confederacy and themes of regret make it compelling.
kamckim's review against another edition
5.0
This is my favorite Ron Rash book. I think I read it before I had a Goodreads account. The characters are dead-on, and reading this one reminded me of Monticello. I enjoy the world Rash creates. Several of his novels are about different generations of the same families, and he creates some interesting cross-over. I just discovered there is a movie based on this book. Let's hope it's better than the film adaptation of SERENA. THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT deserves the highest quality production.
itsmarkyall's review against another edition
3.0
This is somewhere between a 3-4 star book. The writing is great, the story kept me turning pages, but I just felt let down.
erthxy's review against another edition
5.0
Considered this at best a 3.5 rating until the very end. I've experienced pain and sadness in literature but nothing as heartbreaking, longing, and poignant as Rash's character of Travis.
iwillread_all_thebooks's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Car accident, Death, Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, and Alcohol
Moderate: Violence, Self harm, Gun violence, Drug use, and Physical abuse
dave37's review against another edition
4.0
Very good new Southern Gothic. I enjoy Mr. Rash's writing a great deal, and find he paints a more realistic picture of the complex state and motivations of rural Southern folks who are often broad-brushed and assumed simple.
textpublishing's review against another edition
5.0
‘An intellectually satisfying work of suspense … [The World Made Straight] reminds us of the sort of compelling literature a brave artist can fashion from the shards of such experience.’
Los Angeles Times Book Review
‘[Ron Rash’s] novels are complex and compelling, told in graceful, conscientious prose, and The World Made Straight is his finest yet.’
Charlotte Observer
‘Ron Rash writes some of the most memorable novels of this young century … No writer since the late Larry Brown has handled the raw grit of country people as truthfully as Rash… . At once uplifting, harrowing, and unforgettable.’
News & Observer on The World Made Straight
‘[The World Made Straight] is the third novel by Ron Rash that has brought my life to a grinding halt—but to praise Rash simply as a powerful storyteller would be to overlook his gifts as a profoundly ethical writer and, at the same time, a poet with a fine and tender eye for the beauty of nature. What I love and admire most of all about this book, however, is its fierce confrontation of a human dilemma that has sparked too many of the world’s most violent tragedies: the burning question of just how much allegiance we owe family and community, including the ghosts from our past.’
Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
‘The World Made Straight is a wonderful, heartbreaking, heart-healing kind of work, a work of genius—genius and insight and poetry and the kind of language that whispers to me like music coming back off dense wet hills and upturned faces.’
Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
‘Rash writes in the tradition of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor and more contemporary writers such as Charles Frazier and Cormac McCarthy. His fiction occupies that strange, language-driven netherland between myth and realism. It’s a dark, poetic, blood-soaked world.’
Australian
‘Rash’s stories are firmly located in time and place but have a universalism that transcends both.’
Otago Daily Times
‘Woven through the narrative, bloody strands of violence run down through the generations from the Shelton Laurel massacre of 1863 to the savage battle fought by the small-town drug lords of today.’
North & South
Los Angeles Times Book Review
‘[Ron Rash’s] novels are complex and compelling, told in graceful, conscientious prose, and The World Made Straight is his finest yet.’
Charlotte Observer
‘Ron Rash writes some of the most memorable novels of this young century … No writer since the late Larry Brown has handled the raw grit of country people as truthfully as Rash… . At once uplifting, harrowing, and unforgettable.’
News & Observer on The World Made Straight
‘[The World Made Straight] is the third novel by Ron Rash that has brought my life to a grinding halt—but to praise Rash simply as a powerful storyteller would be to overlook his gifts as a profoundly ethical writer and, at the same time, a poet with a fine and tender eye for the beauty of nature. What I love and admire most of all about this book, however, is its fierce confrontation of a human dilemma that has sparked too many of the world’s most violent tragedies: the burning question of just how much allegiance we owe family and community, including the ghosts from our past.’
Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
‘The World Made Straight is a wonderful, heartbreaking, heart-healing kind of work, a work of genius—genius and insight and poetry and the kind of language that whispers to me like music coming back off dense wet hills and upturned faces.’
Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
‘Rash writes in the tradition of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor and more contemporary writers such as Charles Frazier and Cormac McCarthy. His fiction occupies that strange, language-driven netherland between myth and realism. It’s a dark, poetic, blood-soaked world.’
Australian
‘Rash’s stories are firmly located in time and place but have a universalism that transcends both.’
Otago Daily Times
‘Woven through the narrative, bloody strands of violence run down through the generations from the Shelton Laurel massacre of 1863 to the savage battle fought by the small-town drug lords of today.’
North & South
maya7's review against another edition
4.0
Gloomy and bitter as always, but that’s what I like about his books. Ron Rash well depicts feelings and emotions of a young boy stuck in a rural small town struggling to get out.
scottkell's review against another edition
5.0
Yet another late night unable to put down a Ron Rash book.
Direct writing style and great characters.
Loved the intertwining of the Civil War history.
Direct writing style and great characters.
Loved the intertwining of the Civil War history.