Provinces of Night

Rating:
Summary: A Journey through Human Nature
Review: "Provinces of Night" takes its name from a line in a book by Cormac McCarthy and this is likely no coincidence as William Gay resembles McCarthy stylistically, though possibly being a bit more wordy along the way. His characters here run the line of shades of gray, not merely presenting good and evil, and offer some true glimpses of human nature along the way.

The story is that of the Bloodworths, from father E.F., who left his family years ago and has now returned, through his wandering and variously afflicted boys, to his book-reading grandson, Fleming. As an abandoned young man who has been dealt life's toughest cards, it is reaffirming to see him withstand so much and still retain the will to make something good of his life.

Full of humor and insight, this is a book worth reading slowly and savoring. You'll feel like you're there as Gay paints the scenes.

Gay has been compared to Faulkner and this is not a great stretch. Though he tries too hard to make a metaphor work sometimes, it doesn't detract from the overall brilliance of this book - well worthy of all its praise!

Rating:
Summary: Second Effort Is Even Better
Review: "Provinces Of Night", is the second work offered by Mr. William Gay. His first work was very good, however with, "Provinces Of Night", he has become an even more compelling Author. His first work began with a massive explosion, this time it is more of an emotional shudder that while a bit lighter on the fireworks is quite possibly more disturbing to read.

The issue I mention is offered in the form of a Prologue and while you expectantly read to find the dramatic link, this element like others in the story are more like consistent backdrops to the book. These elements play their part and many times a prominent one, however they do so gradually, their prominence steadily draws more importance to the issue but there is no eureka like moment. I liked the style of this story, as it developed at its own pace, it was not a set piece structured to meet a formula.

The characters of this book were many and very well done. The book does primarily surround the various immediate and extended clan of the Bloodworth Family, however there are several other players that round out the cast. There are characters like," Itchy Mama", that provide for some of the best and funniest dialogue in the book. There is a moment she offers Fleming a flask of Whiskey, the comments that accompany the offer are outrageously funny. That moment is a rarity in that I would love to see it on the screen. Others like, "Albright", does not have the genius his name suggests but he is one of the more colorful and funny players in this tale. He also is one of the few who bring some sense of responsibility, or as the book phrases it, "honor", to the storyline.

This is however, "Fleming Bloodworth's" story. The youngest and best hope for the future of this Family line resides with him. He is one of many from this Family but he is the one who eventually must make decisions that no person should be forced to make, however when he does the events seem to propel him more quickly and more definitely in a direction that will change the Family's History, and end what the Bloodworths at this end of Tennessee have fashioned from history.

Literally flowing in the background is a massive wartime project of the TVA that will forever alter this piece of the state. I don't know what the Author intended this to symbolize as it runs the range from a Biblical like destructive cleansing, to a redemption, and even of tasks left uncompleted as roads that once directed the flow of life are now stunted. Even the dead are no longer fixed as they become mobile in the most pragmatic of ways.

If this Author continues to improve with every book he writes, his books will be in print a century from now.

Rating:
Summary: A Journey through Human Nature
Review: "Provinces of Night" takes its name from a line in a book by Cormac McCarthy and this is likely no coincidence as William Gay resembles McCarthy stylistically, though possibly being a bit more wordy along the way. His characters here run the line of shades of gray, not merely presenting good and evil, and offer some true glimpses of human nature along the way.

The story is that of the Bloodworths, from father E.F., who left his family years ago and has now returned, through his wandering and variously afflicted boys, to his book-reading grandson, Fleming. As an abandoned young man who has been dealt life's toughest cards, it is reaffirming to see him withstand so much and still retain the will to make something good of his life.

Full of humor and insight, this is a book worth reading slowly and savoring. You'll feel like you're there as Gay paints the scenes.

Gay has been compared to Faulkner and this is not a great stretch. Though he tries too hard to make a metaphor work sometimes, it doesn't detract from the overall brilliance of this book - well worthy of all its praise!

Rating:
Summary: Bleak at best - Bleak at worst
Review:

I wish I could have liked this book more, but I'm weary of bleak tales of growing up poor and Southern. It's not that I am unaware of the travails of families who lived off the land -- I come from people who lived in the backwoods and made it through the worst times of the Great Depression.

I just don't want to read about their struggles over and over and over again.

As to comparisons between William Gay and William Faulkner -- GET REAL! This guy can't even stand on Faulkner's porch. Faulkner may have created sentences that ran on for 3 pages, but he was smart enough to use punctuation, for heaven's sake.

I guess the literary world is so desperate for quality these days that they'll latch on to anything different. In this case, however, different isn't necessarily better.

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing - A moving, lyrical, heartfelt novel
Review: After reading William Gay's debut novel The Long Home a couple ofmonths ago, I was convinced he was a major talent, reminiscent ofFaulkner. Now, having just finished his latest Provinces of Night, Ithink he may be the greatest living writer in the South.

Provincesof Night is simply brilliant- a big, moving, lyrical tale of familygrudges, young love, sporadic violence and redemption, told by amaster storyteller. The setting is Ackerman's Field, a tiny slice ofTennessee hill country doomed to lay at the bottom of a huge lake whenthe TVA finishes a dam project in the early 1950's. E.F. Bloodworth isabout to return home approximately twenty years after leaving his wifeand 3 sons to pursue his dream of making music (he's a banjo picker),while running from the law after a violent shootout. E.F.'s 3 sons arenot exactly waiting with open arms: Brady is still bitter and spendshis time putting hexes on his enemies, or the enemies of payingclients, from his momma's porch. Warren is a womanizing drunk, whoseescapades with his "accountant" provide some great comicrelief. And then there's Boyd, a wanderer like his daddy, who iscompelled to chase after his wife and lover in Detroit with violenceon his mind.

The center of the novel, and the true moral heart ofthe story, is Boyd's son Fleming, a 17 year old aspiring writer who isforced to fend for himself after Boyd leaves. It is Fleming who seemsto empathize and respect the old man, (E.F. is his grandfather), andwho attempts to care for him upon his return. Gay presents manyengrossing subplots, including Fleming's infatuation with beautifulRaven Lee, Junior Albright's comical struggles to keep himself out oftrouble and free from debt, Boyd's search for his wife, and theefforts of a cattle-trader named Coble to get back at E.F. after thelatter makes a fool of him. Gay keeps all of these balls effectivelyin the air, knowing just when to cut into another storyline withoutdisrupting the continuity of the plot.

It is difficult to fullydescribe Gay's narrative style - the dialogue was sparse and pitchperfect, while the descriptions of the characters, and especially thewonderful Tennessee setting, were superb. This is not a quickpage-turner, although the language is seldom difficult each paragraphis so carefully crafted and well thought out you want to savor thesentences and not rush through them. Oddly, the book has no quotationmarks, dialogue just sort of blends into each paragraph and so thereader is forced to sometimes reread a passage once you realize acharacter is speaking.

I couldn't help thinking as I read the bookthat Fleming reminded me quite a bit of young Nathan Winer from TheLong Home, and in fact Raven Lee seems a lot like the pretty andcorrupted Amber Rose from his earlier novel, but who cares. ReadProvinces of Night and allow Gay to take you back to 1952 Tennessee, aplace you will want to see more of when you put it down. I don't knowwhat Gay has been doing for the past 20 or so years, but I wish hespends the next 20 writing these carefully crafted novels of thesouth, they go down as smooth as the Kentucky bourbon his charactersare so fond of drinking.

Rating:
Summary: A True Voice of the South
Review: Finding THE LONG HOME powerful and fun to read, I was excited to get my hands on this, Mr. Gay's new novel. PROVINCES OF NIGHT exceeded my expectations. Fleming Bloodworth and his grandfather E. F. make an extrodinary pair, the former finding pain and love and bursting with a desire for life (yet with enough wisdom to learn from the latter), and the old man who's come home to find...something, even he's not sure what. A host of eccentric characters round out this work, from a bitter son who casts spells on his enemies, to the funniest adolescent since Cormac McCarthy's Harrogate in SUTTREE. Having grown up with stories of the south, I found Gay's details rich and true. He seems to be writing for himself, drawing on personal stories, humorous experiences and pain and reminds me of other great writers, Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway to name two. I look for an honest voice in fiction and I have certainly found one in William Gay. He is one of the unsung heroes of southern fiction - hell, of fiction period, and he's only written two novels. Here's to many more tales told by this astonishing author.

Rating:
Summary: Beauty
Review: Gay, evoking Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, writes about "simple" people with incredible profundity that employs "drop-dead sentences." Expect to be surprised and overwhelmed by this "carpenter's" mastery of prose. He evokes Faulkner's Cash and God's Jesus--need I say more?

Rating:
Summary: Province of Night
Review: Gay, evoking Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, writes about "simple" people with incredible profundity that employs "drop-dead sentences." Expect to be surprised and overwhelmed by this "carpenter's" mastery of prose. He evokes Faulkner's Cash and God's Jesus--need I say more?

Rating:
Summary: Evocative Storyteller
Review: Having discovered William Gay's "The Long Home," and read his short stories, I enjoyed "The Provinces of Night" for its vivid portraiture of blood ties of real earthy people of a Tennessee backcountry trapped in a time and a place in the 1950s. Gay is a great scene-setter, threading his story with honest dialogue and episodes that move the story of crumbling loyalties and the age-old strife of the South to conclusion. His weaving of dialogue into the text without quotation marks is slightly burdensome but it worked for Charles Frazier in "Cold Mountain" and for Gay's obvious literary idol, Cormac McCarthy. Quite obviously Gay is a student of Faulkner and McCarthy and is not afraid of literary devices and metaphors too much missing in today's action-sped novels. He is truly a Southern storyteller with the ability to evoke the real world of Tennesseans by blending the past with the present. I like his sense of the natural world, describing with a rich palette.---Jesse Earle Bowden, author of "Look and Tremble: A Novel of West Florida."

Rating:
Summary: Evocative Storyteller
Review: Having discovered William Gay's "The Long Home," and read his short stories, I enjoyed "The Provinces of Night" for its vivid portraiture of blood ties of real earthy people of a Tennessee backcountry trapped in a time and a place in the 1950s. Gay is a great scene-setter, threading his story with honest dialogue and episodes that move the story of crumbling loyalties and the age-old strife of the South to conclusion. His weaving of dialogue into the text without quotation marks is slightly burdensome but it worked for Charles Frazier in "Cold Mountain" and for Gay's obvious literary idol, Cormac McCarthy. Quite obviously Gay is a student of Faulkner and McCarthy and is not afraid of literary devices and metaphors too much missing in today's action-sped novels. He is truly a Southern storyteller with the ability to evoke the real world of Tennesseans by blending the past with the present. I like his sense of the natural world, describing with a rich palette.---Jesse Earle Bowden, author of "Look and Tremble: A Novel of West Florida."