ABOUT THE BOOK

Set in the Missouri hill country, The Death Of Sweet Mister presents one eventful summer in the life of Shug, a friendless, overweight 13-year-old living with his mother, Glenda in the caretaker's cottage at the local cemetery. Glenda flirts incessantly, even with her son, who is becoming increasingly aware of her charms. Glenda's husband, Red (who may or may not be Shug's father), comes and goes, bringing money occasionally and strife a lot more often. This summer Red is training Shug in the family business, using the juvenile without a record to perform the burglaries that are getting too risky for Red himself. Shug's efforts to protect his mother from Red, from other admirers, and from her own rash decisions come to a head one hot summer night...

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

An unattractive 13-year-old boy, Shuggie, is the narrator of this violent, intense novel set in the Ozarks, acute in its rendering of the boy's incestuous jealousy for his mother and his rage at the men who bid for her attention.
- New York Times Notable Books of the Year Review 2001

I can't remember coming across a more precise evocation of innocence lost since Golding's The Lord of the Flies. With The Death Of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell has written his masterpiece -- spare, dark, and incandescently beautiful. It broke my heart.
Dennis Lehane

Wonderful characters, but it is the voice of Shug that makes this book such a joy to read, and people who read it will tell you what a wonderful ear Daniel Woodrell has....I can't wait to see what he'll write next.
Lawrence Block

'The Death Of Sweet Mister triumphs in the acuity of its psychological insight into the lethal manifestations of incestuous jealousy...Woodrell is one of the most intense and accomplished practitioners since Jim Thompson.
New York Times

At a time when the two dominant strands of male American fiction to emerge in the last couple of decades - contemporary noir and dirty realism - have largely lapsed into self-parody, a writer from the Ozark mountains of Missouri has come along to resuscitate them both.
John Williams, The Independent

Daniel Woodrell's The Death Of Sweet Mister is nakedly honest, unsettling, pitch perfect, and uniquely American. Put it on the shelf alongside Faulkner, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. With this one, Mr. Woodrell has earned himself a piece of immortality.
George P. Pelecanos

a fiery, poetic, hair raising novel
LA Times

Disturbing, heartbreaking and ruthlessly raw
San Fransisco Chronicle

A dark, disturbing beauty of a story...Woodrell throws down sentences that will leave you amazed.
Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain

The Death of Sweet Mister holds its own against anything in the canon of American literature. This is a book I'd place alongside Faulkner's The Reivers or Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River.
Kaye Gibbons

"Jane Austen saw far less violence in her world, but move her to South Carolina and you'll get some idea of what Daniel Woodrell is up to."
The Spectator

"Terrific."
Literary Review

more reviews...

An Extract

Bizarre Magazine - Interview with Daniel Woodrell