Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant and breathtaking debut novel
Review: Steve Yarbrough has written a book with a wonderful sense of place and time. The characters live and breathe, and the dialogue rings true to the core. As seamlessly as the narrative flows, there are some remarkable eddys and bywaters that greatly enrich the book and demonstrate the author's deft hand. This one is a stunner.
Rating:
Summary: A great novel about the little people
Review: Steve Yarbrough was my writing teacher at Virginia Tech. This novel is a perfect example of his writing style: clear, concise and vivid. It reminds one of Faulkner, where the little people have dramas and character strengths and flaws. It is actually more like a novella, or a short story, of which the author is a master.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant tale where the past & present collide
Review: The Oxygen Man is quite simply a wonderful novel. The writing is clear, vibrant, and imbued with the emotions of the story -- it carries the story like music carries lyrics. The characters are real, empathetic (even the worst of them), fallable and adeptly rendered. And it reminds us that the struggles of being Southern (and human) are more complex than we think, that it is hard to escape the life you were born into, and even harder to escape the life you've lived, but the struggle is wortwhile, and that a world seeming to lack light or love and contain only danger, can really have those things. A book anyone who cares about fiction should read.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read so far this year . . . vivid, memorable
Review: What a wonderful surprise this book was! Something about the characters and their intricate yet unfulfilling lives is so compelling. I cared about Daze and Ned, but was never quite sure as to what was driving them. Yet Yarbrough's story is so well woven, things come together in a startling, yet perfectly plausible fashion toward the end. And what an ending! Very round, completely developed characters, expertly crafted. The sense of setting is also superb, with central Mississippi becoming a character in itself. I am excited to have come across this novel, and am sad that it's over.
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