Rating: 
Summary: Accomplishes what it seems to set out to do.
Review: Lewis Nordan does a wonderful job of creating a trashy, ghetto world without stereotyping any race. A short, nice read. You will find yourself laughing out loud in places where he brilliantly uses dialect. He paints vivid pictures and puts you in the swamps of the town. Definitely worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: not what you first expect
Review: This book started out throwing me completely off track, and seemed to be about NOTHING that was stated on the cover. The meanings are far deeper than the action, especially the symbolism which creeps under your skin when you're least expecting it. I was surprised a lot by this book. I wrote lots of notes in the margins and read more than one story at the same time. Very deep.
Rating:
Summary: not what you first expect
Review: This book started out throwing me completely off track, and seemed to be about NOTHING that was stated on the cover. The meanings are far deeper than the action, especially the symbolism which creeps under your skin when you're least expecting it. I was surprised a lot by this book. I wrote lots of notes in the margins and read more than one story at the same time. Very deep.
Rating: 
Summary: Unbelievably rich
Review: This book tells an often retold tale in such a dramatic way that you feel you are living it and remembering the murder, the southern town racism, along with the author. I read it and read it again. Then bought it for my collection. Then went and read another title by the author...which didn't live up to this one, but how could it?
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, dark, and tragic---and hilarious
Review: Whew! What a book! I've never read anything like this before. Loosely based on the lynching of 14 year old Emmet Till in 1955 (for whistling at a white woman), Nordan's novel is as far away from a crime novel as you can get. A grim and bizarre comedy of callous, drunk, and stupid people, the telling of this tale took me to new destinations in odd but often hilarious ways of telling a story. From the fourth grade teacher who takes her students on a field trip to a mortuary to watch an embalming, to the drunk, befuddled, savvy, vicious, and remorseful Gregg who decides to murder his family except for his eldest daughter (lest she miss her wedding), the residents of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi abound in eccentric, twisted, and macabre individuals (most of them drunk most of the time).The hard realities of racial segregation and deep poverty and ignorance keep one foot of the novel in reality. The murder of fourteen year old Bobo is just barely made tragic. It's striking and believable, in spite of a certain bizarre style of narrative. Overall the narrative holds the reader tightly to itself, but there were a couple rare places where a savvy editor could have lopped off an entire page and spared the reader from an authorial excess. There's no mystery here: you know who commits the crime. There's no forensic story at all. This is a novel of who did it and what they were thinking and how the different residents of the small community were effected by the impact of the tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, dark, and tragic---and hilarious
Review: Whew! What a book! I've never read anything like this before. Loosely based on the lynching of 14 year old Emmet Till in 1955 (for whistling at a white woman), Nordan's novel is as far away from a crime novel as you can get. A grim and bizarre comedy of callous, drunk, and stupid people, the telling of this tale took me to new destinations in odd but often hilarious ways of telling a story. From the fourth grade teacher who takes her students on a field trip to a mortuary to watch an embalming, to the drunk, befuddled, savvy, vicious, and remorseful Gregg who decides to murder his family except for his eldest daughter (lest she miss her wedding), the residents of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi abound in eccentric, twisted, and macabre individuals (most of them drunk most of the time). The hard realities of racial segregation and deep poverty and ignorance keep one foot of the novel in reality. The murder of fourteen year old Bobo is just barely made tragic. It's striking and believable, in spite of a certain bizarre style of narrative. Overall the narrative holds the reader tightly to itself, but there were a couple rare places where a savvy editor could have lopped off an entire page and spared the reader from an authorial excess. There's no mystery here: you know who commits the crime. There's no forensic story at all. This is a novel of who did it and what they were thinking and how the different residents of the small community were effected by the impact of the tragedy.
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