Helpful Score: 1
This writer's use of language is magnificent. Only once did he send me to the dictionary -- it is ordinary language used in extraordinary ways. The plot is intense, and the characters strong. This author belongs on a short list with Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, and Harper Lee and other great writers of Southern lit. I will definitely read this book again and again, and am recommending it to many friends.
I had a hard time getting into this story. The writing is very good, but I started the book 3 times and just couldn't get into it. It meandered from one person to the next and it never "grabbed" me. Maybe if I could get past page 40 it would have picked up, but I just couldn't do it.
Bizarre and horrific story about a perverse undertaker who is blackmailed by a teenage brother and sister (the Tylers) who discover his necrophilia through some disturbing photos they steal from the undertaker's briefcase. But instead of giving in to the demands, the undertaker pays a hired kill to go after the Tylers and retrieve the stolen photos. This is really an edge of your seat thriller and the author (William Gay) has described it as a modern Hansel and Gretel which is an apt description. The last half of the book mainly tells how the boy, Kenneth, is chased by the hired killer through a backwoods area in the South called the Harrikin which is full of overgrown machinery, sunken mine shafts, and eccentric characters. This novel reminded me somewhat of "Night of the Hunter" by Davis Grubb - another superb Southern Gothic tale. I would highly recommend both "Twilight" and "Hunter".
