Tomato Red A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Daniel Woodrell Brian Troxell Megan Abbott foreword Hachette Audio Books
Download As PDF : Tomato Red A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Daniel Woodrell Brian Troxell Megan Abbott foreword Hachette Audio Books
In the Ozarks, what you are is where you are born. If you're born in Venus Holler, you're not much. For Jamalee Merridew, her hair tomato red with rage and ambition, Venus Holler just won't cut it. Jamalee sees her brother, Jason, blessed with drop-dead gorgeous looks and the local object of female obsession, as her ticket out of town. But Jason may just be gay, and in the hills and hollows of the Ozarks, that is the most dangerous and courageous thing a man could be.
Enter Sammy Barlach, a loser ex-con passing through a tired nowhere on the way to a fresher nowhere. Jamalee thinks Sammy is just the kind of muscle she and Jason need.
Tomato Red A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Daniel Woodrell Brian Troxell Megan Abbott foreword Hachette Audio Books
I am working my way through all of Daniel Woodrell's books and I enjoyed this one as much as the others. This tale is set in the Ozarks of Missouri, a depressed rural area. We meet the Merridew family. Mother Bev, who is an attractive blonde who works out of her trailer as a prostitute. Her two children, Jamalee and Jason live next door in a run down shack. Jamalee is dreaming, yearning of escape from these bleak environs. Jason is a gorgeous young man, a perfects specimen and Jamalee thinks he can be their ticket out of the Ozarks. The siblings meet a petty criminal and drifter named Sammy who is from Arkansas. Sammy thinks of Jamalee as "Tomato Red" because of the startling hue she dyed her hair. Sammy joins Jamalee and Jason in their hovel where they plot and plan their escape. There are several tragedies the occur that shatter the lives of these characters forever. The book did kind of end abruptly. I was hoping for more of an explanation. Nontheless, I still liked the book. I like reading about the lower echelon of society. Not to look down on the characters, but to experience and feel their realities.Product details
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Tomato Red A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Daniel Woodrell Brian Troxell Megan Abbott foreword Hachette Audio Books Reviews
OMFG. Started reading when I couldn't get back to sleep at about 3 AM, then I couldn't get back to sleep until I finished it. This is the second of Woodrell's work that I've read, and I am blown away. How he gets in your head with ideas and images that you might never have had before. How you can feel your skin in his people and places. His writing is amazing to me. In the past 15-20 years, during which I've veered away from science writing, because I do that all day, and have veered towards historical fiction and trying to find awesome writing of any genre, my top two have become Woodrell and Ishiguro. Tomato Red took me to some other place. I haven't read the same book twice since adolescence, but I think I'll be reading this one again. Thank you, Daniel.
Again Mr. Woodrell couches the culture of the Ozarks (West Table, Mo. to be exact) in Homeric plot and characters. Sammy is the first anti-hero I have met among Woodrell's characters. Sammy (whose name can't be elevated to the more heroic Samuel) is not able even bust a window! Sammy and Jason partition the character of Homer's Paris (Alexander), a feckless Adonis. Jason is extremely handsome and is better called beautiful. He works as a hairdresser. He may be gay but does not know it yet for sure. Sammy gets a woody after hearing about Jason's homosexual urges. That should tell us something. Jamalee, Jason's sister, has plans to use her brother's beauty to start a gigolo-based money making scheme for the cash to propel them out of Venus holler where they live in a trailer. She is the demure side of Venus, an Artemis figure who will remain a virgin until she is good and ready and then finds her first experience a bust (no pun intended) not to be repeated; it was so bad that she thought it was rear-entry sex. This does not speak well of our anti-hero's love making abilities. Maybe he is asexual himself. Then there is the siblings' mother Bev, the real inhabitant of Venus holler. She is the still gorgeous pandemic goddess from the world of Homer who denigrates Sammy's lovemaking as "wrestling around." She has had so many lovers that she rates being called a porcupine (an Ozark joke?).
The battle scene of this Iliad takes place on a country-club parking lot. Rejected as a job applicant for waitress as pure white trash, Jamalee is physically hoisted by two guys; the scene is surely reminiscent of the Abduction of Helen. Sammy is slow to intervene, coming to the rescue only after Jason gets his eye blackened. He decks one guy only to be laid very low by the other. To get even, these Greek "warriors" ravage the country club with hog-trampling (Troy suffers another layer of fire and brimstone). The first and only gigolo action by the definitely un-studly Jason is met with giggles from the very hopeful but disappointed hair-care customer he allows to seduce him, and she leaves him not a cent for his efforts.
Jason is murdered and left to rot in a pond, thrust through with fishooks here and there (heroic weapons?) There ensues a mystery. Whodunit? We never do learn, as the expected Ozark vendetta never happens. The sheriff attempts to cover up the coroner's clearly deliberate mis-characterization of the death as "accidental drowning." Whoever the perps are (I suspect the husband of the seductress, not some gaybasher) try to buy off the vengeance by offering wergeld, something right out of Homer. Jamalee purloins the cash before any decision about its acceptability can be made, and uses it to make her way to her own idea of Shangrila in Florida. Bev shuts down, Sammy is kicked out and made homeless again, and the Homeric tales ends in a whimper not a bang.
This review touches on the hilarious scenario but I cannot do justice to Woodrell's hilarious dialogue, poetic descriptions and pure story telling genius.
I am working my way through all of Daniel Woodrell's books and I enjoyed this one as much as the others. This tale is set in the Ozarks of Missouri, a depressed rural area. We meet the Merridew family. Mother Bev, who is an attractive blonde who works out of her trailer as a prostitute. Her two children, Jamalee and Jason live next door in a run down shack. Jamalee is dreaming, yearning of escape from these bleak environs. Jason is a gorgeous young man, a perfects specimen and Jamalee thinks he can be their ticket out of the Ozarks. The siblings meet a petty criminal and drifter named Sammy who is from Arkansas. Sammy thinks of Jamalee as "Tomato Red" because of the startling hue she dyed her hair. Sammy joins Jamalee and Jason in their hovel where they plot and plan their escape. There are several tragedies the occur that shatter the lives of these characters forever. The book did kind of end abruptly. I was hoping for more of an explanation. Nontheless, I still liked the book. I like reading about the lower echelon of society. Not to look down on the characters, but to experience and feel their realities.
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