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A review by tasharobinson
Give Us a Kiss by Daniel Woodrell
4.0
This is more a 3.5 book. I've been reading through Daniel Woodrell's books this year, since I've had a pile of them on my shelf since shortly after Winter's Bone became a movie and his back library was published in a series of new, matching editions. I tend to find his stories a little wandering and aimless (apart from Winter's Bone itself, which ends perfectly), but you just can't beat the language — the way his voices vary from book to book, and the way they fit whatever narrative and setting he's calling up. Here, the protagonist is a 30-ish Missouri author who comes from a rough, poor white-trash family who still define his identity much more than anyone he encountered in the literary or collegiate world. That's what makes his voice so interesting as a character — he's a well-executed blend of education and backwoods belligerence, capable of deft self-analysis and of doing incredibly stupid, impulsive things because he wants to impress his family, or because he believes those impulses are naturally in his blood.
The storyline is a ramshackle thing about going to see his older brother, finding him engaged in a lucrative pot-growing scheme, and getting sexually involved with a beautiful young woman with Hollywood ambitions. But this isn't a book to read for the machinations of plot, so much as for luxuriating in expressions like "Been gettin' ham fat and dollar strong," and "I learned him several things about hurt." What I'm finding out about Woodrell is that even when I'm not much objectively interested in the worlds his characters inhabit — which tend to be violent, ignorant, impulsive, criminal worlds — he can draw me in with colorful writing and a nose for telling detail.
The storyline is a ramshackle thing about going to see his older brother, finding him engaged in a lucrative pot-growing scheme, and getting sexually involved with a beautiful young woman with Hollywood ambitions. But this isn't a book to read for the machinations of plot, so much as for luxuriating in expressions like "Been gettin' ham fat and dollar strong," and "I learned him several things about hurt." What I'm finding out about Woodrell is that even when I'm not much objectively interested in the worlds his characters inhabit — which tend to be violent, ignorant, impulsive, criminal worlds — he can draw me in with colorful writing and a nose for telling detail.