A Voice & Vibe Book Review
Give Us a Kiss. Daniel Woodrell. 2012.
Country noir. Southern gothic.
When a spiralling Ozark-born writer heads home for a reset after the collapse of his marriage, he gets sucked into a dangerous family marijuana-growing operation run by a seductive matriarch and her provocative teenage daughter.
The story is narrated in first person by a well-educated, four-time-published-but-still-unknow author caught between the academic world to which he aspires and the rural mountain culture on which he was weaned.
Woodrell manages these two vibes brilliantly by starting the story with the protagonist’s adopted, authorial voice—that of a California academic. Then, by degrees, as the character sinks back into his roots, a folksy Ozark dialect emerges that, eventually, dominantes the character and the story.
It’s such a short novel—barely more than a novella, really—that it’s hard to imagine that Woodrell has the space to do it. But he does. And he does it well. And that speaks to his talent.
AUTHORS – I write short book reviews that focus on voice and vibe. They are useful to querying authors searching for comp titles. There are more like this on my website.