Rating: 5/5
Review:
Excellent
This is an excellent, powerful and affecting book. As in the outstanding Desperation
Road, Michael Farris Smith is in the Mississippi Delta
examining lives of both desperation and hope.
The central protagonist is Jack Boucher, and ageing cage
fighter suffering the effects of multiple injuries and concussions and
dependent on painkillers and alcohol simply to survive the day. He returns to his old home town where his
loved foster-mother is dying and where debt and brutal circumstance threaten to
force him to fight once more.
It doesn't sound very alluring on the surface, but Farris
Smith creates a powerful, gripping atmosphere of the struggle for redemption
among the threat and violence, and also a convincing, moving portrait of the
history of both brutality and humanity which brought Jack to this point. He writes wonderfully, in an almost poetic
style at times which both conveys the humanity and pity in Jack's life and also
looks unflinchingly at the cruelty and violence. Just as a small example, I liked this
fragment: "…the only thing he knew was that he had once been a boy and
then he had become a hitchhiker in his own life."
This isn't a light read, but it's utterly absorbing and
shows a rare humanity and insight. Very
warmly recommended.
(My thanks to No Exit Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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