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Work InformationThe Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock (2011)
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.  Zare | Jan 23, 2024 |    ) HauntedTaco13 | Dec 29, 2023 | ) everettroberts | Oct 20, 2023 | ) Mcdede | Jul 19, 2023 |  ) sunshine9573 | Dec 19, 2022 |
The characters are bound to intersect. Sheriff, sisters, preachers, killers, Arvin: who will collide and how gives the book a real page-turning tension. But where any prime-time television show can incite nail-biting with a lurking killer, Pollock has done much more. He’s layered decades of history, shown the inner thoughts of a collage of characters, and we understand how deeply violence and misfortune have settled into the bones of this place. The question is much more than whether someone will die — it is, can the cycle of bloodletting break? This applies both to the people Pollock so skillfully enlivens as it does to the place he’s taken as his literary heritage. Pollock’s prose is as sickly beautiful as it is hard-boiled. His scenes have a rare and unsettling ability to make the reader woozy, the ends of the chapters flicking like black horseflies off the page. Pollock knows how to dunk readers into a scene and when to pull them out gasping, and the muscular current of each plot line exerts a continuous pull toward the engulfing falls. Important as well, and welcome, is the native intelligence he grants each of his characters. While many of them may be backwoods, none are backwards; and almost all are rich with a fatalistic humor that is often their sole redeeming feature. If Pollock's powerful collection Knockemstiff was a punch to the jaw, his follow-up, a novel set in the violent soul-numbing towns of southern Ohio and West Virginia, feels closer to a mule's kick, and how he draws these folks and their inevitably hopeless lives without pity is what the kick's all about. Tras el sensacional éxito de Knockemstiff, he aquí la esperadísima primera incursión en la novela de Donald Ray Pollock: El diablo a todas horas mezcla la imaginería del gótico norteamericano con la sequedad y crudeza de la novela negra más descarnada en una trama adictiva y contundente, que replica y expande la intensidad de sus mejores relatos. Todo un despliegue de poder narrativo, y la reválida de una firma imprescindible. Cuando Willard Russell, veterano de la primera guerra mundial, descubre que el cáncer empuja a su mujer hacia una muerte inevitable, concluye que solo Jesús podrá socorrer a quien la ciencia ha condenado; tras erigir un altar en pleno bosque, se entrega a unas sesiones de oración que, poco a poco, se tornarán peligrosamente sangrientas, y en las que participará, estoico, su hijo Arvin. Durante más de dos décadas, desde la resaca posbélica hasta los aparentemente esperanzados años sesenta, Arvin crece en busca de su propia versión de la justicia, rodeado de personajes tan particulares como siniestros: Carl y Sandy Henderson, una pareja de asesinos en serie que patrullan América en una extraña misión homicida; el fugitivo Roy, predicador circense y febril, y su compañero Theodore, guitarrista paralítico y asediado por sus pulsiones; el religioso Preston Teagardin, cruel, sádico y lascivo, y el sheriff corrupto Lee Bodecker, que está dejando de beber. Hombres y mujeres frecuentemente dominados por formas monstruosas de la fe, que perdieron el rumbo en un mundo a la deriva donde Dios no es más que una sombra. Belongs to Publisher Seriesİthaki Modern (25) AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There{u2019}s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can{u2019}t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi{u00AD}cial blood he pours on his prayer log. There{u2019}s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America{u2019}s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There{u2019}s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte{u2019}s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right"--Jacket. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.01)
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Wikipedia in English
7
Story on its own is pretty good written, we follow several story-lines that (at first) slowly (then in ever faster pace) converge to rather satisfying conclusion. This is not horror in terms of supernatural but horror caused by human nature. Also book will goes into annals on my end as a book with most terrifyingly vivid depictions of cancer patients.
Book is rather free with some of the elements - incest, sex, sex, blood, blood - and while some of them are understandable (i.e. new preacher and homicidal couple) others are there just for shock and awe effect (i.e. I am still trying to figure out the role of the altar as anything besides scene setup for final showdown). Apparently nobody is doing anything in the farm country than incest, weird religious practices and in general nailing everything that moves (and here it seems they all aim for even younger girls and boys and sex slaves/selling spouses are very common - I think that farmers and miners would have a comment on this but lets leave it as it is). Unrelated to this specific novel, all of this them-incestual-hicks approach while interesting at first becomes very tiring after a while (enough maniacs live in urban areas, you do not need to go outside the cities). In any case this is the central view of rural society in this story; I think that small town horror can be depicted in other ways but OK, I guess sometimes cliche's are required for the shock value.
Author's style is excellent and you will be glued to the pages to the very end. Conversations between and behavior of the characters flow so naturally I could not find any major inconsistency (even events relevant to story progress are very very natural, there is no illogical developments, which one could expect considering story spans decades). Author is truly master when it comes to words and I think that more subtle approach (without shock and awe technique) would suit him more.
All in all very interesting crime noir novel where no-one is spared and you are left wondering what next. I wont go into details because I dont think it can be done without spoiling the novel and that would be true crime. Lets say book "suffers" from what I call "6th sense syndrome" - you will need to have very large time period before re-reading because everything will be very alive in your memory when you read it first time.
Highly recommended and I have to admit I am on a lookout for more works from this author. (