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A review by ctgt
Woe to Live on by Daniel Woodrell
4.0
What a brutal yet beautiful book. The story of a young recruit among the rebels, bushwackers, who specialize in guerrilla warfare battling the bands of Jayhawkers from Kansas. Jake joined Black John Ambrose's band of the First Missouri irregulars with his "near" brother Jack Chiles.
The obvious comparison is to The Outlaw Josie Wales, but this book seems much more brutal or primal, if you will. There are no punches pulled in this story and death is a constant companion. Jake sits on the periphery of the group , not so much for his age but because he is a "dutchman" and he can read and write. As you get to know Jake you begin to see he is a little different, at one point he engineers the release of someone from his home area and in one scene feels that while the killings were justified the manner of death was not. A raid on the town of Lawrence, Kansas proves to be the final straw for Jake.
It took a little while for me to get into the rhythm of his terse, choppy dialogue but once I got used to it the story really flowed quite well. The phrasing reminded me of some of the dialogue from True Grit.
A very different book from Winter's Bone but no less powerful.
The obvious comparison is to The Outlaw Josie Wales, but this book seems much more brutal or primal, if you will. There are no punches pulled in this story and death is a constant companion. Jake sits on the periphery of the group , not so much for his age but because he is a "dutchman" and he can read and write. As you get to know Jake you begin to see he is a little different, at one point he engineers the release of someone from his home area and in one scene feels that while the killings were justified the manner of death was not. A raid on the town of Lawrence, Kansas proves to be the final straw for Jake.
It took a little while for me to get into the rhythm of his terse, choppy dialogue but once I got used to it the story really flowed quite well. The phrasing reminded me of some of the dialogue from True Grit.
A very different book from Winter's Bone but no less powerful.