Daniel Woodrell (1953–2025)

There’s a depth and complexity to Daniel Woodrell’s stories that few writers can approach. If the goal of a short story is to pack as much perfection as possible into a small space, Woodrell comes close more often than not. Plot, character, motivation and place are layered, intertwined and caressed to create truly original stories.

Desperation is the common theme. A young soldier damaged by Iraq and the suicide of his father may choose to return rather than accept his options at home. A show more girl cares for the “joyful and mean” uncle that she turned physically helpless – the uncle that raped her. A father loves his thieving son “like the way I love the Korean conflict. Something terrible I have lived through.” The carnage of the civil war -with former neighbors slaughtering one another - is explored.

Woodrell’s writing is brutally unique. A man describes the houses in his neighborhood as “the kind that if they were people they would cough a lot and spit up tangled stuff.” A man who’s had just about enough of another: “My arms ached already from the thought of digging his new home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.” show less

Not as impressed with this as I maybe should be. It's the (to me) mish-mashed story of the lives destroyed and affected by the explosion of a dance hall in small town Missouri in 1929. Generations later, the "truth" about why it happened has been covered up, and is about to be revealed by an old woman whose sister was one of the victims, and possibly the catalyst for the perpetration of the "crime". There are just too many stories crowded into this short novel, and it would have been better show more served by a less "literary" approach to the telling. Still, well worth reading for some wonderful writing, some wry humor, and some fine insight into the human psyche. 3 1/2 stars.
September 2014 show less

“Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.”

“You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.”

Ree Dolly, a bright and scrappy sixteen year old, living in rural poverty in the Ozarks, with a missing father, an ailing mother and two younger brothers to look after, has just taken on a heap more responsibility- saving the family home.

I first saw the film version of this novel, back in 2010, the same year the book was show more published. It was my introduction to a terrific young actress named Jennifer Lawrence. I have read several other books by Woodrell but always wanted to read the source material and I finally did. It is excellent. I knew he was a good writer but his prose here, absolutely sings. It is tough and lyrical and he captures the hard-scrabble Ozark life with a sharp eye and ear for detail. If you have only seen the film, please give this one your full attention. show less

I loved this book. Despite its short length and readable narrative, Winter’s Bone really packs a punch.

I truly enjoy reading books about the rural South. It’s almost like reading speculative fiction – the Appalachians and the Ozarks read like dystopic wastelands with unfamiliar language, customs, and social mores, sometimes bewildering ones. The devastation wreaked by the extreme poverty of this part of the country is almost unfathomable in its scope. It doesn’t read like it’s show more America, despite that it’s only a handful of states away. I find that fascinating.

There are two main types of extreme poverty in the United States. One is the urban poverty experienced primarily by people of color, and books about that are fascinating and horrifying mostly because of their juxtaposition of that reality with the “rest” of society. They’re powerful in what they say about the rich and poor in close proximity – the Upper East Side and Harlem, glittering high-rises and decrepit row houses, a few dozen blocks apart.

But books about rural Southern poverty, specifically those set deep in the mountains, are different because there is no juxtaposition. There’s no culture to compare it to, no nearby city to gleam in the distance. It isn’t as though they’re looking up at Atlanta and seeing what they can’t have; Atlanta might as well not even exist.

I imagine – though I am not a historian of the region – that these people didn’t start out insular. When you live in the middle of nowhere, untouched and unaffected by all outsiders, needing to be self-sufficient, it’s only natural to turn inward, trusting only your kin. The longer this goes on, the more natural distrust of outsiders becomes. We marginalize them simultaneous to them marginalizing themselves. We don’t save them, or even help them, but I doubt they’d take it, anyway. It’s a completely separate world that feels nothing but disdain and distrust for our own.

In Winter’s Bone, distrust is a given. It never strikes a single character to resolve disputes in any way other than internal, even when faced with the encroachment of the long arm of the law. Ree is the only detective she’ll ever trust. She tries a great number of desperate measures, going to the fringes of her extended family’s empire, yet she doesn’t even want local law enforcement to cross the threshold of her home. And you get it. It’s all perfectly natural. It’s as right as the off-kilter, ungrammatical narration and the word substitutions that I, for one, had to read aloud to understand. It’s context, and the context of the desperate poverty of the Ozarks is perfect here.

Bleak yet fascinating. A great read. show less