Reviews - The Bottoms | The StoryGraph

146 reviews for:

This is more than a mystery but tackles a whole lot of topics including race, poverty, small town culture and how a young person interprets all of these things. The story is told through Harry’s point of view as an 11 year old child who is the first to discover a dead a body. The characters are a great array of small town people with a lot of heartbreak and history between them.
I loved this book. It was a lot deeper and a lot more than I had expected it to be. In the best ways.

detective_megaton's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

martyfried's review against another edition

5.0

I was somewhat tempted to stop reading this early on, first because it was a little boring but then it got better but I was again tempted because I suspected it was headed into a lot of misery. I grew up in the south (Alabama), although a bit later that the '30s, and I knew a little about race relations. But I'm glad I kept on, even though there was indeed a lot of misery. The book was so well-written that it drew me in and I couldn't have stopped even if I's wanted to after a while.

Even though I was born in Alabama, I grew up in the suburbs, and found this story about the people who lived in the "bottoms" to be fascinating. It's hard to even imagine living in a place like that now, where they had very little contact with the outside world, and there was no enforced law and order. It was basically might makes right. If the people decided someone was guilty of what they considered to be a crime, they took care of it right away - mostly, of course, having to do with race relations. The KKK was active, and they took the law into their own hands. The blacks didn't dare to object. When I was growing up, it probably wasn't a whole lot better, but I never saw or heard about anything where I lived, and my family was strongly against that sort of behavior.

I've read a lot of the author's Hap and Leonard series, and enjoyed the humor and fun; I never realized he could write a serious book like this. Now, I may need to look for more.

katejones's review against another edition

4.0

Harry, Tom, Toby and a whole bunch of dead bodies.

Good story, 1930's.

patlibrary89's review against another edition

3.0

Bookclub book becky taylor

testpattern's review against another edition

4.0

This elegant, pitch-black East Texas thriller is probably the best of Lansdale's straight novels that I've read. It suffers from some of Lansdale's usual stylistic ticks, such as overuse of the same homespun turns of phrase, and his once-a-novel cautionary tale about the evils of alcohol abuse, but otherwise the prose glistens. The narrative is set during the Great Depression, and is wonderfully evocative in its description of the period in a location different from the ones we usually see.

nocto's review against another edition

Was there ever a more offputting title for a book? I would never have picked this up if it hadn't have been a group discussionread. The title is wonderfully evocative after you've read the book, but beforehand I wondered if this was a story about a comedy duo or perhaps concerned some kind of obsession with posteriors.

Among readers whose opinions I trust this book is being hailed as the best thing since something very very very good was last published. I thought it was one of the better books I've read in recent times but it didn't grab me the way that other mysteries have. The narration was unusual, the story was excellent and it flowed past me very smoothly. But it did flow past me and not through me. It was very good, but I didn't find it excellent.

ldea's review against another edition

4.0

I started out feeling like this book was a little too much of a To Kill a Mockingbird retread (complete with obvious Boo Radley analog), but by the mid-point of the story the racial politics got considerably more complicated and powerful. Probably the best moment is when Harry's father pierces the Atticus Finch "good white guy" nimbus around him by admitting he screwed up his investigation because of his own prejudice. The mystery itself is also well plotted and threw in enough Red herrings to make the resolution a surprise. The writing throughout is also beautiful and wryly funny, and genuinely frightening at points. The opening scene with Harry and his sister walking through the forest and hearing the sound of someone tracking them chilled me through and through.