Monday Book: Winter's Bone

Sorry for my absence last week; I’m back, and while things are still crazy, I’m at least forcing myself to blog. I’ll try not to whine too much. On to the book review.

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is the book David Henson loaned me because I apparently said that I like disturbing books. This must have been during some discussion of The Lovely Bones. Winter’s Bone doesn’t shock you with the disturbing, but gradually builds toward it. Each chapter, you get a little something more, a deeper knowledge that some of the characters are not what I’d call normal. The story moves along very well, and yes, at the end you get to the big disturbing climax, and it’s pretty interesting.

Sixteen year old Ree Dolly is looking for her father, because he’s due in court, but he’s skipped bail. Their house and land have been put up as collateral, and if Ree can’t haul him in, she and her little brothers and their mentally ruined mother will be homeless. In the rural Ozark valley where the story takes place, the family clans stick unusually close together, defend each other, and sometimes take revenge if it’s warranted.

As practical Ree searches for her father and copes with what’s at stake, the reader gets a look into a lifestyle that’s a bit disturbing itself, in addition to the plot of the story. Drug use, violence, incest, and some strict social rules and a definite family hierarchy are just a part of the setting. While I wrinkled my nose at some of these characters, I found myself impressed with lovable heroine Ree. She has determination and spunk and won’t give up even when she should. While the writing didn’t do much for me – I laughed at some of the sentences where the author really went all out with his overdone prose – I have to admit that the story is good enough to overlook the writing. (This guy really knows his way around a thesaurus and never met a simile he didn’t like. But still.) I liked how he didn’t omit any big scenes, including the violent and grisly. Think of the movie Deliverance, and imagine the story told by someone on the inside. So yeah, I think it qualifies as disturbing.