Cropper's Cabin
by Jim Thompson
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Tommy Carver may be every inch the angry, rebellious young man his teachers and parents accuse him of being. But sometimes, there are reasons for a fury like Tommy's.Tommy's relationship with Donna, the daughter of a man he hates almost as much as his own father, has led to more outbursts than anything else in Tommy's firecracker existence. With her unearthly beauty and a passion that rivals Tommy's own, he couldn't help but fall for her. But as everybody knows, the stories of star-crossed show more lovers never have happy endings--especially not with explosive parties like these.
CROPPER'S CABIN is Jim Thompson's hair-raising thriller of what no writer has known better before or since--the hardscrabble existence of small-town American lives set to blow.
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"Cropper' Cabin" is unlike anything else Thompson published. It is bereft of psychopathic deputies, lacking dirty, underhanded tricks, and doesn't detail a descent into the depths of hell. The protagonist Tommy Carver is not a conman or other shady dealer. This is a piece of country pulp like what Harry Whittington put out. Tommy grew up in a shareholder's shack in the Oklahoma countryside with his meanspirited stepfather and Tommy is busy romancing a rich man's daughter and causing all kinds of havoc at school. Thompson paints this bitter town with a broad brush, encompassing poverty, incest, race relations, legal affairs, and more. But there are few who can write country pulp this good or this believable. In many ways, it is a coming show more of age story as Tommy has to grow up and stand up to his father, to his girlfriend's father, and to the law, which it appears Tommy has run afoul of.
This is a fairly short book and very easy to read. show less
This is a fairly short book and very easy to read. show less
Decent enough pulp murder thriller. Not a lot of meat on this bone; at under 150 pages it was a brisk read and entertaining enough but lacked any real emotional heft or exciting plot twists.
The writing was fine, the story was ok, but nothing much to it. I've read several Jim Thompson novels, but think this will be my last one.
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Author Information
58+ Works 14,567 Members
American novelist and screenwriter Jim Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma on September 27, 1906. In Fort Worth, Texas during prohibition, he worked as a bellboy at the Hotel Texas for two years where he earned up to $300 a week by supplying hotel patrons with bootleg liquor, heroin, and marijuana. During the Depression, he worked with the show more Oklahoma Federal Writers Project and was a member of the Communist Party from 1935 to 1938. During World War II, he worked at an aircraft factory where he was investigated by the FBI for his Communist Party affiliation. His first novel, Now and on Earth, was published in 1942. He wrote more than thirty novels during his lifetime and most of them were paperback pulp crime novels. His best known works are The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman, and Pop. 1280. In 1955, he moved to Hollywood, California to write screenplays with Stanley Kubrick. Thompson helped write The Killing and Paths of Glory. He died after a series of strokes in Los Angeles, California on April 7, 1977. His long-time alcoholism and recent self-inflicted starvation contributed to his death. His death attracted little attention because none of his novels were in print in the U.S. at that time. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Tierra Sucia
- Original title
- Cropper's Cabin
- Original publication date
- 1952
- People/Characters
- Tommy Carver
- Important places
- Oklahoma, USA
- First words
- It was almost dusk, and I knew that meant she'd be waiting for me, her car hidden under the thick willows, waiting just like she had been all along. It was a swell setup.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)We stood looking down into the nest, wondering, deciding rather, what to do with this new life in our hands...
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 267
- Popularity
- 120,854
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- 6 — Catalan, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 12
- ASINs
- 8
