Scan barcode
jarcher's review
4.0
Raw and haunting, much like “Where the Dead Sit Talking.” Disturbing but somehow hopeful - classic Brandon Hobson.
nica00's review
4.0
Well that certainly was a disconcerting fever dream of a character study. Gritty & hopeless until the last few paragraphs & even then it didn’t reach very far into any bright hope. I thought it represented well the dark, dysfunctional side of an urban Dallas where drug use & mental illness wander aimlessly. Themes of human connection, flawed childhoods, and passive living will circle about in my thoughts for a while.
It presented itself like a preliminary sketch book of characters later recycled in Hobson’s 2018 release, Where The Dead Sit Talking.
It presented itself like a preliminary sketch book of characters later recycled in Hobson’s 2018 release, Where The Dead Sit Talking.
leerazer's review
4.0
Mills Tavern was a shabby old saloon with a plank floor, dark wood paneling. An old jukebox played Johnny Cash: Early one mornin' while makin' the rounds, I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down. "Buddy of mine from Oklahoma played this song at his wedding," the guy sitting next to Gene said. The bartender and the other guy laughed.
Recommended if you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, who both offers a blurb for this novel and named it as one of her six favorite books in a 2017 interview (I might should go read all that list!). Hobson's Deep Ellum is an interesting compare/contrast to Moshfegh; while both get deep inside characters inhabiting the alienated edges of society, barely hanging on to the deformed shape of a life which is the best they've been able to fashion to this point, and are able to do so with not necessarily a lot of pages, I've always felt Moshfegh's work was steeped in misanthropy, while Hobson doesn't really seem to have that quality to his fiction, even here. His characters may be equally fucked up, yet his calm and undramatic prose offers them more grace.
Possibly it's partly age - as Hobson says he took a long time to work out his fiction; Deep Ellum was published when he was 44 and is his de facto debut, if you leave out a short experimental long out-of-print work published eight years before this one. Moshfegh in contrast isn't even 40 yet and has several major novels to her name. Will she move further towards grace and away from misanthropy in her novels of the next decade? I'll certainly be reading to find out.
Deep Ellum reads like an extended short story, leaving much unresolved and ambiguous. It's about family, and addiction, and mental illness. It paints a compelling picture and characterization without ever spelling a whole lot out. The characters are mostly depressed. It's almost as if the prose itself is depressed, rousing itself to tell you a little, but then sighing, "whatever, nevermind". Gideon, our narrator, pops hydrocodone pills, but the prose just tells you "I took a hydrocodone", without any fuss. The reader can construct what that means for herself.
Plot wise not a terrible lot happens. Gideon takes a walk through the Deep Ellum neighborhood. He chats with a girl. He scrounges a job. He sees an old friend who works at Taco Hut. He gets into a bath with his older sister (here too just hints of something dark, not overly spelled out). He takes pills. He visits his mother, gets in a fight with his stepfather. Little bursts of activity that form a picture of a whole.
On the final page the family all gets together and "It seemed this would be the moment of a great communication for all of us, but as we walked along the fence toward the barn, nobody said anything." Without saying much, this book says a lot, which is always a nice trick.
Recommended if you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, who both offers a blurb for this novel and named it as one of her six favorite books in a 2017 interview (I might should go read all that list!). Hobson's Deep Ellum is an interesting compare/contrast to Moshfegh; while both get deep inside characters inhabiting the alienated edges of society, barely hanging on to the deformed shape of a life which is the best they've been able to fashion to this point, and are able to do so with not necessarily a lot of pages, I've always felt Moshfegh's work was steeped in misanthropy, while Hobson doesn't really seem to have that quality to his fiction, even here. His characters may be equally fucked up, yet his calm and undramatic prose offers them more grace.
Possibly it's partly age - as Hobson says he took a long time to work out his fiction; Deep Ellum was published when he was 44 and is his de facto debut, if you leave out a short experimental long out-of-print work published eight years before this one. Moshfegh in contrast isn't even 40 yet and has several major novels to her name. Will she move further towards grace and away from misanthropy in her novels of the next decade? I'll certainly be reading to find out.
Deep Ellum reads like an extended short story, leaving much unresolved and ambiguous. It's about family, and addiction, and mental illness. It paints a compelling picture and characterization without ever spelling a whole lot out. The characters are mostly depressed. It's almost as if the prose itself is depressed, rousing itself to tell you a little, but then sighing, "whatever, nevermind". Gideon, our narrator, pops hydrocodone pills, but the prose just tells you "I took a hydrocodone", without any fuss. The reader can construct what that means for herself.
Plot wise not a terrible lot happens. Gideon takes a walk through the Deep Ellum neighborhood. He chats with a girl. He scrounges a job. He sees an old friend who works at Taco Hut. He gets into a bath with his older sister (here too just hints of something dark, not overly spelled out). He takes pills. He visits his mother, gets in a fight with his stepfather. Little bursts of activity that form a picture of a whole.
On the final page the family all gets together and "It seemed this would be the moment of a great communication for all of us, but as we walked along the fence toward the barn, nobody said anything." Without saying much, this book says a lot, which is always a nice trick.
More...