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Copyright © 2003 No Exit Press
The Death Of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell
Limited Edition: First 1000 Copies numbered and signed by the author
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ISBN: 1842430432
Price: £14.99
Casing: Paperback
Format: Demy with flaps (216x135mm)
Extent: 224pp
Rights: UK & Commonwealth ex Canada
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Woodrell comes from a long line of Ozarkers that stretch back before the Civil War. A high school dropout he joined the marine corps at 17.The military and he saw things differently. A period of post military drifting ended up at the University of Kansas and a Michener fellowship at the Iowa Writers School, where he was definitely the odd man out. His first novel, Under the Bright Lights, used the noir form and bought him high praise and recognition from fellow writers. He has also written two noir novels featuring the Shade family, Muscle for the Wing and The Ones You Do, the civil war novel, Woe To Live On, Tomato Red and the country noir, Give Us A Kiss. He lives in West Plains, Missouri with his wife, the writer, Katie Estill.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
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Guardian Unlimited 13th April 2002 Chris Petit Daniel Woodrell - who was famously described by Annie Proulx as "reaming the language with a dry corncob" - is a writer's writer, and many queue to praise (Lehane, Pelecanos). His work is best described as high pulp, and he writes with the finely tuned ear of a man who might well have a PhD in American vernacular. Woodrell specialises in honed portraits of trashy and trashed lives, and The Death of Sweet Mister (No Exit Press, £14.99) is spot-on, a bad-trip version of the coming-of-age story that shows a real understanding of human pain and violence. It plays itself out in achingly poetic language, reflecting the inspiration of what the 13-year-old protagonist describes as "olden rhyming rock'n'roll", and is particularly acute on the bully's mind and the shove-and-poke mysteries of sex. Of note too is No Exit's reissue of Woodrell's The Ones You Do (£8.99), a more conventional piece of noir revenge that demonstrates his skill for pared prose: a double-cross and a lot of bad road, with unflinching observation of the American underbelly, and desperately funny. |
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Crime Time May 2002 Michael Carlson I once said Daniel Woodrell was the only person writing 'country noir' whose work is both 'country' and 'noir', but with this novel he has transcended that category. Or perhaps taken it back to its red-dirt roots, because this tale of the coming of age of thirteen-year-old Shug, and his summer torn between his trashy mother Glenda and her violently criminal husband Red, is like James M. Cain (the Cain of The Butterfly) without the overdone romanticism, or maybe the Erskine Cardwell of Tobacco Road, but with more menace. It's written with enough of an undercurrent of malice and disaster to recall Jim Thompson at his most manic, and if all this name-dropping isn't impressing you, George Pelecanos compares Woodrell to Cormac McCarthy and I don't believe he's overstating the case. What makes this novel work so well is the atmosphere, and the way the conflict and inevitable temptation build slowly and inexorably, and Shug tries to, well, shrug off his baby fat and become a man. Woodrell's portraits of the trailer-park trash types who've populated his country noir are as sharp as ever, and here presented with a sort of sympathy that makes the hint of forbidden pleasure and the promise of some tragic violence even more palpable. When things reach crisis point, the idea that the resolution is so straightforward, and the twist at the end so right, merely reinforces the power of the characterisation that has come before. This has the same sort of emotional impact as The Ones You Do, which to me is still Woodrell's most moving novel. He has improved since then; the settings and writing have grown richer, but The Death of Sweet Mister is the first of the novels since to match the personal intensity of that earlier effort. This book marks him as a major American novelist. |
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The Times 30th March 2002 Paul Connolly Over the course of six novels Daniel Woodrell has whittled away at his craft in an effort to pare it down to its irreducible core. And with his seventh, The Death of Sweet Mister, he has pretty much achieved that goal. At 189 pages Sweet Mister reads like a book that is considerably shorter — it is easily finished in a couple of hours. His next work may well be published on the back of a postage stamp. Woodrell deals in what has been dubbed, quite accurately, country noir; his tales deal with life on the margins of the margins of rural America. In his latest book the protagonist is a 13-year-old boy called Shug, who lives with his coquettish mother, Glenda, and his vile and violent father, Red, in a house in the middle of a cemetery. Friendless Shug spends his days tending to the cemetery where, with his lawnmower, he “shaves the fuzz from the entire dead” and, under duress, helps the loathsome Red and his friend Basil who “had in common both being a bubble off plumb”, rob the sick local townsfolk of their medication. Throw into this mix a smooth-talking chef with his flash Thunderbird and Shug’s growing sexual obsession with his mother, who calls him “her sweet mister”, and the shocking denouement becomes almost inevitable. Shug is probably Woodrell’s most fully realised and most intelligent character yet. He knows that his circumstances dictate that his life will never amount to much. Living in the middle of a graveyard where his bedroom window looks out on to a vista of tombstones also does not bode well. “I believe dusks and dawns spent staring out that window shaded me ever more towards no-good and lonely.” There is a hint of the warped Southern weirdness of Barry Hannah and a distant Gothic echo of William Faulkner in Woodrell’s piquant yet fecund prose, but his is an original voice. This story of the death of childhood may be brief and brutal, but its emotional heft will linger. |
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Bookmunch March 2002 'Stoop' There is quite a tradition in American literature of shadowing the unfortunate. It manifests itself in books as dissimilar as Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird and, more recently, books like Russell Banks’ Rule of the Bone. The Death of Sweet Mister is an astonishing - and quite beautiful - addition to that canon. Shug is the Sweet Mister of the title, an overweight thirteen year old living with his mother, Glenda, in the caretaker’s cottage overlooking a cemetery (or bone orchard as he calls it). Aside of lusting after his mother (lust she flirtatiously encourages), Shug spends the better portion of his time either mowing the lawns and trimming the grass between the headstones or robbing houses for Red, the guy who claims to love Shug’s mother (only you’d never know, what with the fighting and the violence). Red parks the car and sends Shug into houses and apartments (up drainpipes, in through windows and back porch doors) looking for dope, pills of any kind. Shug does as he is told. He does as he is told or he gets a belt. This is the life and life has been proceeding like this for some goodly time, you think, and would probably proceed for a goodly time more if it wasn’t for the appearance of Jimmy Vin. Jimmy Vin is the beginning of the end. What separates The Death of Sweet Mister from a million and one other stories (other stories that function quite literally as asides from Jerry Springer) is the writing. Woodrell writes like Annie Proulx or Seamus Heaney. It’s like the words are fragments of bone, buried in the ground beneath some rusting old trailer, fragments he has carefully and lovingly restored to life. The sentences are skeletal and awkward at times; you wonder whether it is right to put certain words together, but then you relax: it’s beautiful, and clever, the construction of this. There are words and phrases that, clear of mud, are held up to the light sose you can stand a way back and admire them. By the climax (which is desperately sad and cruel and fucked up) you still feel that you have witnessed a remarkable tale told remarkably. Any Cop?: The kind of book that should send you kicking and screaming to the bookshop for everything else Woodrell has written. |
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The Bookseller 16th November 2001 Greg Eden Although I've only discovered the work of American novelist Dan Woodrell comaprtively recently, he has quickly become a firm faourite of mine among contemporary American writers, alongside other rising stars such as Brady Udall, Pinckney Benedict and William Gay. His titles lie somewhere on the borderline of contemporary noir and dirty realism, and he certainly deserves a much wider readership than he currently enjoys. Set in Woodrell's native landscape of the Ozark mountains of Missouri, The Death of Sweet Mister is an outstanding addition to his already impressive work. It tells the largely bleak, and undoubtedly moving story of the hapless Shug, a friendless, overweight 13-year-old, railroaded into a life of petty larceny by his feckless stepfather, and of the events of the long, hot summer that sees him come of age. A spare, unadorned account of one boy's loss of innocence, which combines strong characterisation, a vivid backdrop, and a finely tuned ear for dialogue. I would urge you to read this, or any other Dan Woodrell novel, at the earliest opportunity. |
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Publishing News 9th November 2001 Woodrell's tale of lost innocence is oneof those books which encapsulates perfectly the essence of rural America. Set in the Missouri hills, it tells of one eventful summer in the life of Shug, an overweight social outcast living with his mother by a local cemetery. Shug's complex relationship with his mother, and her burglar husband REd (who may or may not be his father) comes to a head one summer night in violent fashion. This is self-consciously literary fiction, and none the worse for that, as Woodrell's artistry has been compared to Faulkner. His dark tale is so intense but its country sombreness is also moving and memorable. Some more feted British authors would benefit from studying the economic style in evidence here. The benefit to British readers in discovering this gem is self-evident. |
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New York Times Since his debut with 'Under the Bright Lights' (1986), Woodrell has been preoccupied with the complicated emotional claims of family amid the harsh backcountry of his native Ozarks. He has struggled to find a prose style that is authentic to the unlettered poetry of his characters yet supple and sharp in its explication of twisted consciousness. A trio of detective stories found Woodrell's themes at odds with genre expectations, and a historical novel, 'Woe to Live On' (1987), was well executed but a dead end. His breakthrough was 'Give Us a Kiss' (1996), a 'country noir' written like Elmore Leonard slurping moonshine, a manner Woodrell brilliantly refined in 'Tomato Red' (1998). Now he has achieved near mastery of style: language, plot, characterization and theme mesh with a seamless power and without the sardonic glibness ('I hope that's the punch line. 'Cause this best be a joke') that made his previous books, in the end, minor. 'The Death of Sweet Mister' triumphs in the acuity of its psychological insight into the lethal manifestations of incestuous jealousy. Much as Shuggie fears the volatile Red, he immediately hates Jimmy, a far more potent competitor for his mother's affection. By narrating Shuggie's restricted perceptions in his functionally illiterate voice, Woodrell powerfully dramatizes the turbulence of his barely controlled and wholly unacknowledged urges. (Indeed, the only flaw of the novel is a scene in which Woodrell makes Shuggie's incestuous emotions explicit.) And this method results in a masterly set piece of suspense during Shuggie's discovery of a murder: 'Hands had posted bloody signs along the wall and into the hall. The signs were smeared. Her room was down the hall. Her room with the bed was down the hall. . . . I eased into the room and looked for the bodies. I figured there'd be bodies. I never had figured I'd be the one who'd have to find the bodies.' Violent action, oversize emotion, exaggerated characterization: Woodrell's fiction has never shied from the vulgarities of pulp novels. In this tradition -- which, at its best, substitutes for literary delicacy the rendition of human passion with rude, compelling force -- Woodrell is one of the most intense and accomplished practitioners since Jim Thompson. The ambiguities of Shuggie's comprehension and the murderous shifts of his and Glenda's loyalties result in a conclusion of almost metaphysical bleakness: 'There was something off about the sun. Not as round as normal but shining hard. All that sunshine coming my way and nothing I cared to see.' If Jim Thompson is dime-store Dostoyevsky, Daniel Woodrell is a less highfalutin Faulkner. |
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San Fransisco Chronicle In the Ozark-noir world of Daniel Woodrell, niceties are as worthless as a three-legged coon dog. His characters aren't the type to mince words, they're not people you want as kin and they certainly don't read the Sunday book section. They are poor, violent, addicted, torn-up and often flat-out mean. In his seventh and darkest novel, 'The Death of Sweet Mister,' Woodrell explores topics that most folks don't want to think about, let alone read. That's why this novel may well be his best. Shuggie Atkins, 13, fat and lonely, lives in a grim world. Shuggie shares a house with his constantly drinking mother, Glenda, and her husband, the vicious, brutal Red. Gut-bucket poor, the family nominally ekes out an existence caretaking at the local cemetery in West Table, Mo., the fictional town central to Woodrell's last three novels. But Red, who refuses to go back to prison, makes his money the Ozark way -- he robs, steals, cons, hustles and gambles. When Jimmy Vin Pearce, a mysterious man with a Thunderbird comes calling, the enticing Glenda listens. What follows can only be described as disturbing, heartbreaking and ruthlessly raw. 'The Death of Sweet Mister' isn't for everyone. Those willing to traverse to Woodrell's dark places will find solid writing and a style as sophisticated as it is smart. While the subject matter makes his past rough-neck books seem tame, Woodrell writes as convincingly as ever. |
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Penzler Pick, June 2001: This is Daniel Woodrell's third book set in the Ozarks and, like the other two, Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red, it peels back the layers from lives already made bare by poverty and petty crime, exposing the reader to the raw everyday hopes and fears of the poor and the helpless. Told through the voice of an overweight 13-year-old boy named Shuggy Atkins, this is the story of Shug; the one person who loves him, his mother Glenda; and her boyfriend Red, a brutal and ignorant man. Red hates Shug but uses him to break into houses to steal drugs and anything else that can be sold. Glenda makes a meager living looking after the local cemetery and spends her time trying to keep Red amused and away from Shug, whom he loves to humiliate but whom she adores. Glenda is Shug's only champion. She calls him Sweet Mister as she continually boosts his confidence and promises a better life for him, if not for herself. But when Glenda sees a beautiful, green Thunderbird with leather seats and its driver, Jimmy Vin Pearce, a chain of events is set into motion that will end in violence and bloodshed. Glenda must keep hidden from Red her infatuation with Jimmy Vin's money and fine clothes while she and Shug dream separate dreams of making a new life away from the violence. Woodrell writes books that are small in volume but large in scope. It is impossible to put down this story of less than 200 pages until the final tragedy unfolds.
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Publishers Weekly Woodrell (Tomato Red) excels at depicting the seedy side of Southern living, and in this brooding coming-of-age tale he revisits the hardscrabble Ozarks town of West Table, Mo., his dark, insistently realist prose packing a visceral punch. Overweight 13-year-old Shuggie Atkins, sharp and cynical for his age, lives in a ramshackle house situated in a "bone yard" with his perpetually drunk and dreamy mother, Glenda, and his savage stepfather, Red. Despite Red's hot temper, Glenda's tendency to behave foolishly and Shuggie's frustrations, their lives settle into a rough-hewn rhythm: Red comes and goes as he pleases; Shuggie tends to the graveyard grass and helps Red steal painkillers from helpless cancer patients; and Glenda sips her "tea" cocktails and flirts with Shuggie. Then balding but classy Jimmy Vin Pearce roars into their lives in a shiny green T-bird and begins an affair with Glenda. Overcome by jealousy, Shuggie must decide should he betray his mother or grant her happiness? Woodrell displays his characters in an unforgiving light, never succumbing to the urge to romanticize them. Through unsparing prose and deft characterization, he conveys the harsh philosophy best summed up in one of Glenda's rare bits of motherly advice: "You wake up in this here world, my sweet li'l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin' and stay tough 'til lights out have you learned that?" Woodrell's merciless realism is shot through with humor and rural wisdom; his work may not be to everyone's taste, but his bleak world is rendered with consummate artistry. |
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Booklist "You wake up in this here world, my sweet li'l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin' and you stay tough until lights out--have you learned that?" The problem is that Sweet Mister, aka Shuggie Akins, isn't tough. He's 13, he's lonely, he's fat, and he's scared, but he's not tough, at least not tough enough to protect himself and his mom, Glenda, from his dad, Red, a career criminal with an unquenchable thirst for pharmaceuticals of every variety. This third in Woodrell's stunning series of "country noirs"--following Tomato Red (1998) and Give Us a Kiss (1996)--returns to West Table, Missouri, deep in the Ozarks, where the fuses are short, and the tragedies, like the thunderstorms, are just waiting to happen. Woodrell describes the lives of his Ozark hill folk with unflinching honesty, but he never fails to find heartbreaking tenderness beneath the hardscrabble surface. This time that tenderness is more fragile than ever, more capable of turning on itself and producing bursts of blood-driven violence. Narrator Shuggie is a kind of noir Huck Finn, his life as an apprentice criminal--forced by Red to steal pain medication from the terminally ill--a suggestion of what Huck might have been in for had Pappy not died. Between slurping rum and cola, Glenda lavishes attention on her "sweet li'l mister," but that, too, is a thunderstorm waiting to crack, as the line between motherly concern and sexual provocation becomes harder for Shuggie to draw. And, then, inevitably, Jimmy Vin Pearce drives up in a green Thunderbird, high-pressure system meeting low-pressure system, and the storm breaks. It may sound like an updated version of God's Little Acre, but in Woodrell's hands, it's not in the slightest imitative. He finds poetry in pathos, but he also turns coming-of-age into a bargain with the devil. A word-perfect conclusion to an unforgettable trilogy of novels.
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Library Journal Woodrell's six previous novels (e.g., Tomato Red) have gathered more acclaim in Europe than at home, but Putnam is hoping that the situation will change with this new novel. Set in Woodrell's native Missouri hill country, it presents one eventful summer in the life of Shug, a friendless, overweight 13-year-old living with his mother 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. The gritty realism of this quick, compelling read won't be to every taste, but Woodrell's latest novel is recommended for public libraries.
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More Praise for The Death of Sweet Mister 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.
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. 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.
a fiery, poetic, hair raising novel
The Death of Sweet Mister [is] as stunning and evocative as [an] ancient Greek tragedy. My congratulations to Woodrell for a wonderful book.
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.
Powerful, disturbing, and raw-the last in Daniel Woodrell's Ozark trilogy and also his darkest novel, its voices coming straight out of the Missouri hill country that is its setting...Woodrell's South, like his prose, is complex and ironic; it is as beautiful and full of love as it is violent and self-destructive.
A dark, disturbing beauty of a story...Woodrell throws down sentences that will leave you amazed.
"...but let's agree on Woodrell as the foremost exponent of the poetry of trailer-park trash. Woodrell does the best 'country noir' prose there is, and if you want to be hip read him now..."
"Woodrell proves once again that he's one of the finest exponents of American noir writing. His seductive and deceptively lazy style lulls the reader into a false sense of security - and then hits him below the belt. In short, he's an original and first-rate story-teller."
"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."
"Terrific."
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