The Night of the Hunter

Rating:
Summary: As Good As Anything Written By Bigger Names
Review: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Tolstoy et al, will always have a place in the pantheon of literature. In this reader's opinion, this novel warrants a little niche in that pantheon for Davis Grubb, whose lean, muscular and evocative prose propels this thrilling story, driving it toward the inevitable conclusion.

Charles Laughton's movie based on this book was an interesting effort and well done, but if one hasn't read the unsentimental, un-varnished novel, then somewhere a potential reader is missing the juice. Like Laughton's screen effort the novel is indeed pregnant, but not at all unwieldly; rather, the book, slender as it is, is bursting with some of the best writing put to paper in any genre and is as good as anything ever written by the more prolific Masters.

Grubb's unpretentious style looms up from the pages like the reek of the bottom waters at river's edge. Subtle by turns, the terrifying game of hide-and-seek between light and shadow jumps at the most unexpected moments, just like the novel's villain with his knife.

Filled with archetypes and certainly many levels of meaning for interpretation by the reader, this is one novel one won't forget soon. It stalks memory and, personally, I find myself still returning to the book from time to time to savor a magnificently rendered mood, and a time, place and story that is as fresh and exciting now as it was almost half a century ago.

Writing true and honest profiles of such diverse characters, let alone children, is no easy thing, and Grubb's work is peopled with wholly believable characters who truly cast shadows, live and breathe, even in the periphery. This is part of the novel's triumph.

I cannot recommend Night of the Hunter too highly. It's simply a "must read" for anyone who loves good literature, fine writing --and isn't predjudiced against genre. In this beautiful, sinister work, Davis Grubb breaks the mold.

Rating:
Summary: This book could change your life.
Review: I bought this book in Italy, to read on the trains. I expected a routine crime thriller. It is much, much better than that. The Rev. Harry Powell is well known as one of the great villains. A great villain requires a great hero, and Grubb provides two of them. John Harper is very appealing in his devotion to his little sister Pearl, but it is Rachel Cooper that is the character that raises this book to the highest level. She has the capacity to change your life, with her capacity for goodness. She changed mine. What more could you ask for in a book?

Rating:
Summary: Captivating, haunting and eloquent
Review: This book deserves a renaissance, or a rebirth, or something, because it is largely overlooked or ignored or simply nonexistent to an entire generation of readers who would undoubtedly love it as much as I did, and as much as the millions of people who turned it into a national bestseller in the 1950s. This tale of tragedy and suspense also offers some timeless commentary on religious hypocrisy and greed that are as relevant today as they were at the time.

Ostensibly about the plight of an eventually orphaned young brother and sister entrusted with a small fortune, and the villanous "preacher" who knows that they know where this fortune is, my perspective is that the book is as much a character study as it is a thriller. The characters in question are many, and greatly varied, ranging from the doomed parents to the well-meaning neighbors to the miscreant preacher, but the 10 year-old boy, John, is the most intriguing of them all. In the course of four chapters and an epilogue, a boy's innocence is lost in the most heartbreaking ways imaginable, yet in some way it is also restored by the story's end. If one of the central components of good literature is character transformation, we witness some truly extraordinary and entirely believable character evolution in the boy John, and the effect on the reader is so naturally emotional that we are blind to the mechanics of the author's manipulation. For me, that is the hallmark of excellent story telling.

This was Davis Grubb's finest hour as a novelist, and in my opinion it is every bit as good as any other piece of "classic" American literature. I rank this small masterpiece alongside such literary milestones as "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "East of Eden."

Rating:
Summary: Grim, gripping, dark and thrilling.
Review: This is an excellent thriller and it's very grim. It's surprisingly not dated for a book from the fifties. Excellent and highly recommended