Of all the contemporary Southern novels today that draw comparisons to Faulkner and O’Connor, Starnes’ tale may be one of the few that deserves them. The unsentimental but glorious world seen through the eyes of a “half mutt half chow” fearful of man and guns is pure Faulkner. Elmer, condemning the bigwigs around him for “their fondness for impure women and liquor and money and the love of their own images reflected in shiny glass,” echoes the righteous, scathing hatred of Hazel Motes (“Wise Blood”).
And like the best chroniclers of Appalachia—think Larry Brown, Charles Frazier and Ron Rash—Starnes pays tribute to the stragglers of this disappearing world, those helpless with love for it and helpless to save it.
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