PD's first novel, with semi-autobiographical elements.

I can see in this book lots of hints of the incredible talent that resulted in Paris Trout, but it's all still a little undeveloped. The characters are intermittently captivating. The plot isn't as tight, and there are tangents hanging like loose threads. Also, Mickey never came into focus for me like the other characters did - and while it's okay to spin a book on an Everyman axis, I dont' think that's PD's style.

As a portrait of a place, it's kind of like Mystic River. Heavy on atmosphere and underbelly - which I love. Fiction like this is a better way to capture time/place than anything else, including film and photography. Words, syntax, even in the narrative, is tinged with a time-stamp that can't be recreated later. And because we can't know what will become politically incorrect down the line, the voice is truest when it's unhindered by second thought. You could certainly call PD's characters racist, sexist, and lots of other terrible things, but those become secondary considerations to what is happening to them in the moment of the story.

Now that I know that Shellburn's demise is modelled on PD's own experience, it makes me reconsider the book. In a way it feels like everything leading up to the end has been piled up with the end in mind. I don't know that this is the way to plot a book. OTOH, if something like that happened to me, I would have to consider some fictional account to make sense of it. ( )