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A review by ghostboyreads
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
3.5
"I'd seen people I'd known just about my whole life pick up snakes and drink poison, hold fire up to their faces just to see if it would burn them. Holy people too. God-fearing folks that hadn't ever acted like that a day in their lives. But Chambliss convinced them it was safe to challenge the will of God. He made them think it was okay to take that dare if they believed."
Southern Literature is such a special and magical branch of literature, it's one that seems to always offer up the most crushing, heartfelt and compelling of stories. A Land More Kind Than Home is a fantastic example of what Southern Literature can bring to the table, it's a real, proper, God-fearing Appalachian story. As far as these kind of novels go, it's eerie and haunting, but never quite delivers on the violent spark that one would expect to be present. That's not to say it isn't violent, it's there, it just simmers away in the background instead of exploding in the face of the reader.
It's a novel of vagueness and subtlety rather than searing, gruesome brutality. And, it's incredibly moving, it's a very, very sad novel. There's a heavy, disquieting sense of agony that seems to burn through every single chapter. Really, A Land More Kind Than Home is a family drama with all the dressings of a grit-lit novel that seemingly never fully commits to outright ferocity and instead chooses cavernous and intense melancholy.
Southern Literature is such a special and magical branch of literature, it's one that seems to always offer up the most crushing, heartfelt and compelling of stories. A Land More Kind Than Home is a fantastic example of what Southern Literature can bring to the table, it's a real, proper, God-fearing Appalachian story. As far as these kind of novels go, it's eerie and haunting, but never quite delivers on the violent spark that one would expect to be present. That's not to say it isn't violent, it's there, it just simmers away in the background instead of exploding in the face of the reader.
It's a novel of vagueness and subtlety rather than searing, gruesome brutality. And, it's incredibly moving, it's a very, very sad novel. There's a heavy, disquieting sense of agony that seems to burn through every single chapter. Really, A Land More Kind Than Home is a family drama with all the dressings of a grit-lit novel that seemingly never fully commits to outright ferocity and instead chooses cavernous and intense melancholy.
"I wanted to open the front door and holler at him, let him know that he shouldn't do it, not because I was afraid that he'd damage the crime scene or contaminate the evidence but because I knew he might not be ready, might not ever be ready, for what he'd see under there. But I also knew that fathers want to see what's become of their sons, and sometimes, they can't forgive themselves if they don't. "
Yet, there's a profound purity to the storytelling of this tale. It's rather simple, but beautiful. A Novel full of bleakness, a novel to fill your soul with sorrow, that's what this is. This novel is a slow burner of a tale that forces the reader to watch the destruction of a family unfurl without hurry. It's not ramped up at all, sometimes, though, that's exactly what you need. While A Land More Kind Than Home may not exactly be shocking or ghastly, it's still charming and delightful and offers up a brilliant introduction into this type of literature.
"Sometimes, when I get to thinking about it, I wish I'd have blown his damn head off right there and left him laid up in the snow with his brains hanging up in the limbs of some old pine tree. I didn't do it, but I'll be damned if I don't think about it every day. Every single day."