REDNECK DREAMS WHITE TRASH REALITY

I have now finished reading Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell but I can't take any credit for discovering this little masterpiece of noir. It was recommended by Reed Farrell Coleman in this interview with Megan Abbott.

http://www.mysteryreaders.org/athomecoleman.html

A city boy from Brooklyn charmed by Woodrell's tale of Ozark mountain redneck angst.

Underrated is easy: Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell. That that book is out of print is in itself a crime.

I find it difficult on occasions to agree with The Independent viewspaper, but their review is pretty accurate.

"A flat out marvellous book........great literary fiction."

In the Ozark town of West Table, Missouri, the Merridews live in Venus Holler, which marks them out as "blighted white trash". Sammy Barlach, a drifter and failed everything, meets up with easy going Bev Merridew, her tomato red haired daughter Jamalee, and her beautiful son Jason. With Sammy on the team Jamalee's dreams and desire for a new life somewhere else, anywhere else, begin to take shape.

It seems simple Sammy will provide the muscle and Jason's beauty will provide the money as rich women pay for his favours.

But Jason's inclinations are more towards the "iron-pumping queer" music teacher Mr Hart, than the ladies who frequent the hairdressers where he works.

Jamalee is forced to seek work at the plush golf club and her rejection leads to tragic consequences.

This novel is all about character, atmosphere and the wonderful descriptive passages . The plot is secondary because we can be pretty certain that there are going to be no miracles in the bleak lives of these rednecks.

"You people are the lowest scum in town."........This expression of utter frankness takes over Jason's beautiful face, and he says, "I don't think we're the lowest scum in town." He didn't argue we weren't scum,just disputed our position on the depth chart.

I have never been to the Ozarks but if they are like the mountains of Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee or Eastern Kentucky at least these losers had the small consolation of living in a beautiful setting.

They'd been holding those kids as hostages to the welfare machine and drawing decent ransom checks.........so he'd installed Jamalee to answer the phone and mimic his woman. A piece of paper had been taped to the wall above the phone, and it had files, sort of, on his kids: birth dates, eye colors, school situations, excuses: so Jamalee could talk straight to any social welfare snoops.

Daniel Woodrell wrote Woe To Live On which was made into what I think was one of the best war films of all time, Ride With The Devil directed by Ang Lee and starred Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich.

SUPERDUPER-SUBPRIME: WORD OF THE YEAR 2008?

Even the American Dialect Society knows how risky home mortgages are these days. The group of wordsmiths chose "subprime" as 2007's Word of the Year at its annual convention Friday.






You people are the lowest scum in town."........This expression of utter frankness takes over Jason's beautiful face, and he says, "I don't think we're the lowest scum in town." He didn't argue we weren't scum,just disputed our position on the depth chart.


They'd been holding those kids as hostages to the welfare machine and drawing decent ransom checks.........so he'd installed Jamalee to answer the phone and mimic his woman. A piece of paper had been taped to the wall above the phone, and it had files, sort of, on his kids: birth dates, eye colors, school situations, excuses: so Jamalee could talk straight to any social welfare snoops.

Tomato Red....Daniel Woodrell

Definitely candidates for a "supersubprime" loan, or perhaps a "superduper-subprime" loan.

What is a bank, an organization that lends you an umbrella on a sunny day, but wants it back when it starts raining.

FROM THE MANSION TO THE TRAILER PARK

In another diversion from my usual diet of Italian and Scandinavian crime fiction, I have just started reading Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell. Although this book is classified under the lable of "Country Noir" I have a strong feeling that West Table, Missouri might have a few things in common with Vigata, Sicily.

In the first few pages I have come across lines that struck me as very evocative of small rural towns in both the USA and the UK, and the immense social gulf that exists in them.

"Rich folk apparently love their spectacular views, pay dear for them, I'm sure, so there was all this glass."

"This mansion is not but about a rifle shot from the trailer park, but it seemed like I'd undergone interplanetary travel. I'd never collided with this world before."

"This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser."

I do envy Woodrell's ability to convey so much anger with so few words

BEST OF THE YEAR: BEYOND EUROPE

Firstly I am not going to reveal my top European reads until they are posted on Eurocrime in the New Year.

But there were two books that were outstanding from the crime fiction I read from beyond the European continent.


My posts on the superb Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell can be read here if you scroll down.



The media go on about the US subprime mortgage market, and I wonder if the banks really lent money to redneck dreamers like the Merridews, and then bundled them into a financial package to sell on to other bonehead institutions. The money lost by the big banks would buy an awful lot of trailer parks in the Ozarks.

The other book was The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, which was a brilliantly honest story about detective Joe Cashin and his attempt to solve a murder complicated by racial and social problems in a harsh Australian setting.

I will aim to read a lot more of Peter Temple in the future.