Tomato Red

Rating:
Summary: Blood ,sweat, toil and tears
Review: Woodrell is marketed , at least in the UK ,as a crime writer --his British publisher the estimable No Exit Press labelling them as country noir--but the subject matter is social class normally a covert as distinct from overt theme in crime writing .In particular they treat of the dispossessed ,the bottom feeders who must lie to cover up gaps in employment history all for the sake of menial low paid work which still denies them the cornerstones of human dignity namely choice ,spontaneity and purpose.
Tomato Red is narrated by Sammy Barlach who as the boojk opens is employed as a labourer in a dog food factory and has his foreman on his back the whole time . On a drunken Friday payday ,drinking with bar room buddies and fuelled by substances both illicit and alcoholic ,not to mention a heady dose of sexual bravado he , on a dare breaks into the home of an absent wealthy family and promptly passes out.He is awoken by Jamalee--aka Tomato Red for her distinctively dyed hair and her androgynous beautiful brother Jason They are not as he assumes and they pretend wealthy inhabitants of the home but trailer park inhabitants from the most despised part of their backwater town Venus Hollow.They flee when police arrive and Sammy is taken in by the pair and their mother Bev who is unashamedly a hooker and whose calm stoic dignity is a commanding presence in the book
Jamalee dreams of escape and views Jason -poor sexually confused Jason whose hard road is to be gay in a world where this is not an easy furrow to plough.Jason as magnet for sexual blackmail is the plan and Sammy the protector.In a heartbreaking but strangely funny scene she rehearses Sammy and Jason in good manners using an antedeluvian etiquette book role playing with plastic cups instead of cut glass.
These are intruders into the world of comfortable society whose life is around of small humiliations--Sammy is followed when entering a supermarket,simply because of his looks,police harrassment is common and the greatest enemy they face is the active collusion of there fellow blue collar citizens from the next tier above .
The book is not a comfortable read but all is not gloom.The narrative voice --Sammy -is wry and sharply funny;there is compassion Steinbeck ,Farrell,Algren et al the names usually associated with blue collar fiction ,all pall beside Woodrell for his clear eyed portrait of the dirt poor .He does not sentimentalise and the resolution is spot on.Escape is possible but only at the expense of your own kind.Witness if you will the actions of crabs in a basket; when one seeks to crawl out the others combine to pull him down

There is a bitter -sweet inevitabilty here which is moving .Not for eveyone but I am moved by him as by few other writers I am moved to anger by smooth voiced television hosts building a not insubstantial fortune on the back of people like those here and then exposing them to the baying hordes

We are all human and our destination is they same ultimately.We need reminding of this and Woodrell does it brilliantly.