Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
My rating: 4/5 cats
tomato red is an earlier book by daniel woodrell, and occasionally this becomes apparent. there are moments where it gets a little overwritten even for me, the lover of melodrama and the densely-packed sentence.
is it as good as winter’s bone??
no.
but it’s like saying “is megan fox as hot as angelina jolie, or is she some kind of cheaper, off-brand, less genuinely badass version??” does it matter?? is anyone kicking either of these ladies out of bed?? nope.
woodrell is never gonna get kicked out of my bookshelf. i want to read him sparingly, because his books tend to be short and there aren’t that many of them, but i now know that when i read one, i am guaranteed to enjoy it.
this one is much more of an appalachia noir than winter’s bone, but it still employs the same themes of frustration and impotence and futility in that “this is where you were born and this is what you get” kind of steinbeckian inevitability that i have always been drawn to. cleverness won’t get you out, beauty won’t get you out, sexual proficiency won’t get you out, and there’s no such thing as justice, even of the poetic kind. and that is as bleak as it sounds, but the struggle is a beautiful thing.
you can’t help but love the narrator; the most hapless character to ever attempt a life of crime. for a girl. a series of girls. and the rest of it? it’s funny and sad and beautiful. woodrell has a real knack for bringing the reader to the brink of hope and then kicking the characters’ legs out from under them. for a short book, there are a lot of emotional turns.
i push woodrell on you. i don’t think he can be resisted.
