A Swollen Red Sun

Another winner from McBride. Nonstop violence and depravity from cover-to-cover, but with a depth of (usually disgusting) characterization that sets it apart. The story of cop Dale Banks' involvement with a bunch of meth-heads in a backwoods Missouri County is going to win any awards from that state's Chamber of Commerce, but it will keep you entertained--unless you have a weak stomach--for a few hours. The audio version, read by John McLain, is superbly done.

Such a sad book, filled with desperate people leading desperate lives. Some of them are just evil, others totally over their heads with no future and an ugly present.

Reading about them is compelling, however, always wondering what other tragedy lies just over the hill.

You won't like any of the characters -- well, perhaps Olen is an exception, -- but you'll feel sorry for some, pity others, and be very glad you play no part in their lives. Most of them I suspect would be waving Confederate flags at a NASCAR race.

I hope McBride writes from imagination and not experience. I fear the latter. His Goodreads' page notes that “These people are the people I know and see every day, and this is the world I know.”

Welcome to Hardscrabble, USA. This used to be a place where men carved a living out of the land; farmed livestock, raised families, rode steers and stayed honest. Now it’s redneck central, rotten trailers rusting on dusty tracks; crank-addicts toking and buying and selling the product brewed by those feared, weird men who never come down from the mountain. Welcome to the world of A Swollen Red Sun.

A compelling contemporary novel if ever there was one, A Swollen Red Sun treads the same tracks as Cormac McCarthy or ‘Rust and Bone’, but tells its own story and in a particularly gripping way. The story is populated with fully-fledged characters, men with aspirations and ambitions, be they the high school football hero turned show more rodeo-rider turned Sheriff’s deputy; or the family man with a farmstead as well as his deputy’s badge; or the tweaker-dealer who has dreams of escaping his grimy life and being a good man to his dream girl… if only he knew how.
Author Matthew McBride has taken every traditional character you might expect to find in this kind of situation and hurled them into the mix – even down to an insane preacher who brews meth on the mountain, chains girls in the basement and finds Jesus in his hallucinations.
(There's more details plot and character info over at:
http://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/a-swollen-red-sun-something-... )

Some of the characters blur a little – I have to admit that a couple of the tweaker thugs were indistinguishable to me – but the writing in this hard-hitting novel propels you along with the inevitable awfulness as things get rapidly out of hand. On crystal meth, violence saturates the atmosphere and threatens to uncoil at any moment, and that’s exactly what McBride captures here.
It’s a shame that the women characters are little more than ciphers: they are the victims or the goodwives, and feel sketchily drawn. This is man’s country and all the major characters are unreconstructed hormonal males, snarling and snapping at each other’s throats. They may long for an honest woman and a clean family, but wouldn’t know how to provide for one save with the barrel of a shotgun.

Vivid, nasty, violent and thought-provoking, A Swollen Red Sun is 21st century rural America at its worst – and modern American thriller writing heading for its best.

8/10 show less

I grew up in meth country a few states northeast of Matthew McBride's Gasconade County and I recognize his people. For those of you without direct experience check out the book and film "Winter's Bone" for another look at the bleak lives of the rural poor.

In "A Swollen Red Sun" Mr. McBride tells a grotesque, yet mostly believable, story of the tangled lives of people tied to their place and to their dead-end lives by poverty, history, inadequate schooling, and drugs. Anyone with experience in these communities will "know" McBride's people and their patterns of thought and action. With the exception of Reverend Butch Pogue, who is so whacked out that he must surely be derived from some Missouri tall tale, these people could be some of show more my neighbors.

Close reading of the text reveals some inconsistencies, of weather particularly, and some unlikely details of farming activities, animal nutrition, and the road stability of an old Bonneville. These rough bits do not detract much from the story and probably won't be noticed by most readers. I must say, though, that I do not think Mr. McBride has driven a vehicle through a creek recently and I am pretty sure his leg is not strong enough to stomp a 2 x 4 in half on a short brace.

The Advance Review Copy has lots of incorrect object pronouns and a few odd word choices that I hope have been cleared up in the print edition.

I received an Advance Review Copy of "A Swollen Red Sun" by Matthew McBride (Open Road Integrated Media) through NetGalley.com. show less

This book definitely is NOT a fairy tale.

Banks and his partner are staking out a tweaker and Banks finds the meth head's stash of cash. (In a turd filled cat litter box) He takes it. Figuring he needs it for his family and no one's ever going to know.
Yeah right.


This book is full of some of the white trashest people I've found in books. Oh and I flipping loved it. Matthew McBride fills the characters out so that you almost smell the stench of that broke down trailer.

Maybe people should be made to read this book before they are stupid enough to try that first hit of meth. I forgot, these folks are lucky to be able to read their name. Sad.

DON'T do drugs!

I will say the whole story had me glued to it. I had to see how it played out...and it show more was gooooooood.

I received an ARC copy of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Good page-turner, a noir set in backwoods Mississippi, complete with crooked cops, cranked-up fiends, and all the white-trash you can handle. The writing was excellent, and the dialogue was well-written in the local vernacular and slang you'd expect.

I'd recommend this to anyone that's a fan of noir-style thrillers, or fans of Deliverance... :D

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

This book brought the nasty world of Meth into focus. Well paced and vivid and I have recommended it to a few fellow readers.