This Ohio author tops my list. Donald Ray Pollock’s 2008 short story collection “Knockemstiff” revealed a writer with the will to fearlessly plunge his readers into dark, desolate worlds. Pollock’s prose churns with locomotive force. His storylines hurl us through echoing tunnels of the imagination.
“The Devil All the Time,” Pollock’s first full-length novel, is inhabited by a cast of characters that range from deeply religious to morally insane. Arvin Russell, the central character, is the thread that holds this ambitious story together. Set mostly in Ohio and West Virginia between World War II and the 1960s, Pollock artfully spins a web of converging plot lines. Arvin’s dad, Willard, is psychologically damaged from his wartime service in the South Pacific. A pair of serial killers roam the summer highways. A preacher plays with spiders. Another one preys on the innocent. “Devil” is a creepy delight.
"The Tiger's Wife" by Téa Obreht (Random House, 354 pages, $15)
Téa Obreht has made a smashing literary debut. Her first novel, “The Tiger’s Wife,” has gotten rave reviews and deservedly so. The author was born in the former Yugoslavia. Her novel is set in a fictional country, which bears some resemblance to her native land.
For someone so young (Obreht is still in her 20s), she is a gifted story teller. In “The Tiger’s Wife” a young doctor named Natalia remembers her late grandfather’s fabulous swirling tales. When her grandfather was a boy a tiger was hiding in the mountains. And who was the tiger’s wife? There’s the story of the man who cannot die. And what are they looking for in the vineyard? Such magical writing.
"Feast Day of Fools" by James Lee Burke (Simon and Schuster, 463 pages, $26.99)
James Lee Burke puts out a new novel each year like clockwork.
After 30 novels, he is showing no signs of slowing his pace. “Feast Day of Fools” might just be his best book yet. A few years ago, Burke brought back a character named Hackberry Holland for a novel called “Rain Gods.” Holland is a Korean War veteran and he is the sheriff of a remote Texas county along the Mexican border.
Preacher Jack Collins, a Thompson submachine gun-toting villain, is Holland’s nemesis. There is a fugitive who possesses military secrets hiding somewhere in Hack’s jurisdiction. This is a race between the good guys and the bad ones to try to find this man first. In “Feast Day of Fools” Holland is thrust into a bizarre alliance with the devilish Preacher Jack. James Lee Burke has done it again.
Next week: I'll have my nonfiction favorites for you.
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Friday at 1:30 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, go online to www.wyso.org/programs/book-nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
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