A review by trudilibrarian
Scowler by Daniel Kraus

4.0

It puzzles me -- and sometimes frustrates me to no end -- how or why some books get categorized/released as Young Adult. These days it seems the label has become so loosey-goosey all that's required is that there be a teen protagonist. Content, language, themes -- all of the meatier, important elements of any book are blithely ignored in the rush to market and movie deals.

There are definitely books that walk the hinterland -- the very, very outer reaches of YA and upon reading them you realize that there's way more 'Adult' in the pages than 'Young'. On any given Sunday it shouldn't really matter ....except for when it does. In the case of Scowler it makes me think about how many people will ignore it and miss out turned off by its YA label, and then it makes me think about the young teen readers who will lack the emotional maturity and mental resilience to process such a dark and disturbing tale.

Scowler is firmly planted in the Rural Lit / Country Noir tradition. Really, if someone had handed me this book and told me it was written by [a:Donald Ray Pollock|784866|Donald Ray Pollock|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1240540889p2/784866.jpg] or [a:Daniel Woodrell|65135|Daniel Woodrell|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1276358809p2/65135.jpg] I wouldn't have blinked an eye.

Yes, it's that good and that dark. Patriarch Marvin Burke is as chilling and disturbing a villain as any I've encountered and belongs in the pages of a [a:Frank Bill|3983305|Frank Bill|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1366952773p2/3983305.jpg] novel. The language is vibrant and pulsing -- a living, breathing thing:

The cracks in the dirt now yawned to proportions slutty with thirst...

There it was. A miracle, really, finding this speck of bone in a world of dust. There was a brown spot of blood on the tooth's root, and to Ry it seemed the encapsulation of the bum deal of life: a once-perfect thing plucked and bloodied and tossed to the dirt.

I had originally shelved this as 'horror' but am now removing it because while Scowler is horrific in parts, it has much more in common with realistic, gritty fiction that has a psychological underbelly.

I highly recommend this one.