Rating: 
Summary: Where Did All The Vigor Go?
Review: Provinces of Night has so much beauty and humor that I want to praise it to high heaven. Old E.F. Bloodworth is such a salwart character that one can almost feel his presence even when he isn't in the scene. Mr. Gay's narrative is simply breathtaking. The language of the characters themselves, however, is big city street, even the women's. Did small town southeners really use that brand of profanity in the early fifties? Another little problem is with the ending. I hate to see such a robust book just dissolve away in uncontested bleakness. Why couldn't one or two of these fine characters have stood up and given one last roar? I thought to myself, they lord...
Rating: 
Summary: Not just the story, but the Language...
Review: PROVINCES OF NIGHT is a wonderful novel. Yes, the characters are interesting, the dialogue crisp and humorous, the issues as complex as that of any great Southern writer. But, what I really enjoyed about this novel was the beautifully crafted prose. Gay takes great care with his descriptions, writing with hints of Cormac McCarthy's style. Initially, I wondered if this was a case of imitation, but in the end I decided it was not. They use similar tools at times, but Gay is an original voice in his own right. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone that loves the style and cadences of Southern writing.
Rating:
Summary: A Book of Quiet and Astonishing Beauty
Review: Read this book simply to savor some of the most beautifully crafted sentences in the English language. While you are enjoying them, meet Fleming, a 17-year-old who should, by all rights, be bitter with the world. He has been brought up dirt poor and has been abandoned by both his parents. The grandmother who loves him is off limits to him because she shares her home with an uncle who is at best eccentric and at worst pure evil. The handful of people who care that he exists are flawed and even dangerous.Fleming finds improbable soulmates in his grandfather, a wandering blues musician who has led a less-than-exemplary life but whose gift of self-expression inspires Fleming, and Raven Lee, the daughter of a prostitute who is resolutely determined to make her own way in life. I tutor inner-city children. Every so often, I meet a kid who shines despite the harshness of his upbringing. I marvel at how someone who has been neglected both physically and emotionally can grasp onto life and thrive. This book gives insight into how a person can trascend his environment. Its flawlessly drawn characters and near-perfect prose make it a classic of our times.
Rating:
Summary: Beauty
Review: The power of this man's language is very impressive. I just love the words, the images, the way he tells a tale of everyday people but somehow infuses the world with wonder. Read this one.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Satisfying Work
Review: This is one of those rare books that can be humorous and profound and devastating, all within the span of a couple of chapters. I found myself laughing aloud at some passages and taking time out to relay parts of the story to my wife. This is a book that you just get excited about because it is so darn good and so true. Each character feels real, and though some behave like devils, I found the ultimate destination of the story to be a very satisfying province.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZINGLY GOOD WRITING...
Review: When I read William Gay's first novel, THE LONG HOME, recently, I had the strong feeling that I had discovered the work of someone very special - and reading PROVINCES OF NIGHT has confirmed that for me. Gay writes with a carefully and languidly - the breadth and depth of his writing demands full attention from the reader, and the rewards are great indeed. The above-mentioned languid quality of his work does not for a single moment indicate any sort of laziness on his part - writing this good can, of course, come from the foundation of a natural talent, but it takes hard and diligent work to come up with a finished product of this quality. Gay's characters are vivid and real, and they are built up slowly - the reader is required to get to know them, rather than having them dumped off the page and into their lap. His descriptive abilities are astonishing as well - if there isn't a word that suits the image he's trying to get across, he's not above combining existing words into a single unit, and he does so with taste, style and intelligence. There are no cheap, easy gimmicks at work here - just talent and imagination. Set in the same small rural Tennessee town in which his earlier novel takes place - but in the 1950s this time, as opposed to the 1940s - Gay captures the setting and characters with absolute perfection. His country folk are depicted honestly - they are uneducated, to be sure, and some of them are certainly not the brightest match in the box, but he treats them with respect. They come across as honest and real - the figures of speech they employ might seem odd to city dwellers, and their knowledge of the world outside of their area ranges from non-existent to a shadowy grey awareness that is tempered liberally with misinformation and rumor. They look upon outsiders with doubt and suspicion - and usually for good reason. The relationship that develops over the course of the story between E. W. Bloodworth - an elderly man who left the area, his wife and family, many years before - and his grandson Fleming, whom he has never seen is one of the most touching depictions I've come across in some time, without ever venturing anywhere near the maudlin. The Bloodworth clan - and their neighbors and acquaintances - are a pretty rough-hewn lot. They number among their members bootleggers, drunks, hell-raisers, stand-by-your-man women and I-ain't-takin-any-more-of-your-BS women. Fleming is a pretty intelligent - if uneducated - young man, and he is instantly attracted to his grandfather's personality and stories of his life. E. F. is a banjo player and singer, a collector of old tunes - mostly blues. His fame actually spread to the point of a record label recording eight of his songs - but he never chose to pursue music as a career. It simply meant too much to him. When E. F. decides to return home after many years away, he stirs the stew of a lot of family members and other locals - he's not exactly welcomed back by everyone with open arms. One of his sons, in particular, Brady, is downright hostile. Brady is quite a piece of work himself, living with his elderly mother (E. F.'s wife) and casting spells and hexes on any and all who cross him. He's looked upon by the locals as a bit of a curiosity and a crackpot - but at the same time, with enough trepidation that they try not to wind up on his bad side. There's a whole cast of memorable characters here - and a main plot with several related subplots that whirl and eddy around each other like currents in a stream. Definitely enough to keep the reader involved and interested. William Gay is a writer of amazing talent and patience - if you're a fan of well-written, compelling fiction that contains emotion as well as a gentle dose of humor now and then, you owe it to yourself to check out his work. My next stop is his short story collection, I HATE TO SEE THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN.
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Summary: Goes Down Real Easy
Review: When I read William Gay's very impressive debut novel The Long Home a few months ago on a recommendation, I thought he was a promising southern writer, reminiscent of Faulkner. His tale of evil moonshiners, crooked cops, racists and injustice was a refreshing change of pace from most contemporary fiction. Now, with his latest masterpiece Provinces of Night, I am starting to believe Gay may be the most talented writer living in the South today. This book is simply astonishing, at times brutal and at other times tender and poetic, but always enjoyable. The story involves the Bloodworth family, including banjo-picker E.F., who left his young wife and sons twenty years earlier to chase his musical dreams, and to get away from the aftermath of a violent shootout. E.F. has decided to return home, to a valley about to be buried under a lake by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1952, as the nation enters the Korean War. Bloodworth's grown sons Warren (a womanizing alcoholic), Boyd (who is compelled to chase down his adulterous wife and her lover) and Brady (who still lives at home and places hexes on enemies for revenge or profit) are not exactly waiting with open arms. It is only Boyd's 17 year old son Fleming, E.F.'s grandson, who seems to care what happens to the old man upon his return. Fleming is the true heart and moral center of the novel. His odd relationship with his wandering dad, his blossoming romance with young Raven Lee, his tense tolerance of uncles Brady and Warren and his bonding with E.F. are skillfully woven around numerous effective and often-times humorous subplots. I loved the adventures of Fleming's buddy Junior Albright, who accidentally breaks some machinery after conning his way onto a jobsite as a roofer, with serious and far reaching consequences. I also loved the manic roadtrip with Warren and his "accountant", as well as Fleming's alcoholic cousin. The plot never really slowed down to a halt, and Gay manages to keep several balls in the air without missing a beat. Fleming did remind me a little of idealistic young Nathan Winer of The Long Home, and Raven Lee seemed a bit similar to Amber Rose of the prior novel (both are young dark beauties raised in a setting that is anything but innocent), but who cares, I enjoyed their adventures anyway. Perhaps the best part of the novel, for me, was Gay's prose style. He has a way of setting the scene, depicting the family sitting on a porch listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio with the Tennessee hills turning purple at sunset, that swept me away every time I picked up the book. There are no quotation marks in the novel, instead Gay curiously weaves the dialogue into the paragraphs, so you oftentimes find yourself re-reading passages once you realize a character is speaking. This started out as a mild distraction, but I came to enjoy the technique after awhile. Quite simply, Gay is a master storyteller, his dialogue is pitch perfect, and his descriptions, while not overly verbose or flowery, never fail to effectively set the stage. You want to read slowly and savor every drop of his writing, like sipping a fine Kentucky bourbon (as his characters are wont to do). I don't know what Mr. Gay has been up to previously, he apparently started writing novels later in life, but I hope he keeps putting out these excellent novels of Tennessee, this reader can't wait for the next one.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Writing
Review: William Gay can write like mad. If you love to read, if you love books, if you love words and the way they can express things you see and understand but can barely put into thought images let alone words, buy and read this book. Then, when you have savored the richness of it, go buy and read The Long Home. Put William Gay high on your list of writers whose books you will buy as soon as they hit the book stores.
Rating: 
Summary: a great storyteller
Review: William Gay is one of the best southern writers around. HJe makes characters and usses dialouge that is so rich and true to the south that I feel transported. That is why I was a little dissapointed when some of the characters lapsed into some modern diaougue. OVerall, the important thing is that Mr. Gay has once again developed characters that are well-rounded and often quite evil. The main story is about a wwandering father and his three sons and their sons. It takes two generations for anyone to give E.F. Bloodworth any respect and that is only really from Fleming, the youngest grandson. The characters of Brady and Neal are so realistiic though in their meanness, because look at their gene pool! E.F. would kill anyone in his youth, and left them all to raise themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Deserves a Prize
Review: William Gay writes beautifully on subjects of deepest importance to the human condition. He is a worthy newcomer to the highest echelons of Southern letters and richly deserves awards for this novel.
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