Sarah's Library

23/4 - I've never read anything like it, just as the inside front cover predicted. It's nothing like what I was expecting either. It doesn't really have a blub anywhere on the book, so from the title and front cover image I was expecting either true crime or horror revolving around isolated farms owned by families of inbred yokels who practice cannibalism on the unlucky who break down in their hunting territory. Crimes in Southern Indiana is nothing like either of those possibilities. I've read about eight stories so far, and some of them have been connected to each other, kind of like continuing chapters from the same book, while others have been standalone. There is a lot of very graphic violence and disturbing situations - not for children or the squeamish. It's also not what I would consider required reading if you're intent on making a visit to Southern Indiana, this book is more likely to scare you away (especially from the people) rather than encourage you to plan your holiday. To be continued...

25/4 - As it's ANZAC day and this is my only review for the day I would like to ask everyone reading this to pause for a minute of silence in honour of all the men and women who fought for our safety and freedom. For me personally I think of my great-grandfathers and grandfather who fought at Gallipoli, the Western Front, and Papua New Guinea respectively through both world wars.

Back to the review. Please, if Crimes in Southern Indiana is anywhere close to the truth of life in the 'heartland' of America, don't tell me. I don't want to know that this is life for people living in the so called 'lucky country'. The stories in this book paint a very bleak picture of Southern Indiana. So far, all bar one story have featured people shooting each other with a wide variety of guns, some I haven't even heard of. Most of the gun violence is in revenge for earlier slights against a person or family, an eye for an eye is the real law out there in the 'heartland', the police haven't got a chance and often followed the idea of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. To be continued...

27/4 - With my last post (since I've finished the book) I've got to give you a sample of some of the spectacularly evocative language featured in Crimes in Southern Indiana:

Pitchfork and Darnell burst through the scuffed motel door like a two barrels of buckshot.

First sentence of the first page of the first story, Hill Clan Cross, in the book.
The opening paragraph continues with:

Using the daisy-patterned bed to divide the dealers from the buyers, Pitchfork buried a .45-caliber Colt in Karl's peat moss unibrow with his right hand. Separated Irvine's green eyes with the sawed-off 12-gauge in his left, pushed the two young men away from the mattress, stopped them at a wall painted with nicotine, and shouted, "Drop the rucks, Karl!"

Immediately, the words grabbed me and I could see, just so clearly, the picture the words were painting. In my recent review of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian I called into question the way it was written - sentenceless, mostly punctuationless, littered with highfalutin words most readers don't understand and scatterings of Spanish that a non-Spanish speaker can't read - despite the many reviewers calling it beautifully written. I found the paragraph from Crimes in Southern Indiana far more compelling. That's the kind of writing I was expecting from such a highly regarded author of so many years experience, but I didn't get it from the experienced author, I got it from Frank Bill, the largely unknown, first time author. Interesting, isn't it? Something to think about.