Donald Ray Pollock's prose plunges readers into the raw, often brutal, realities of marginalized lives, drawing from his own experiences working in factories and mills. His narratives are steeped in a visceral authenticity, exploring themes of desperation, faith, and the search for redemption in the overlooked corners of America. With a stark, unvarnished style, he captures the vernacular and the weariness of characters grappling with their circumstances. Pollock's work reveals a profound empathy for the disenfranchised, rendering their struggles with unflinching honesty and a darkly resonant power.
Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband and wife team of serial killers, trawl America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. The spider handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso guitar playing sidekick are running from the law.
Cane, Cob and Chimney Jewett are young Georgia sharecroppers held under the thumb of their domineering, God-struck father Pearl. When he dies unexpectedly, they set out on horseback to rob and loot their way to wealth and infamy, inspired by a lurid dime novel that only one of them can read. But little goes as planned and soon they're pursued by both the authorities and by stories that make them out to be the most fearsome trio of bank robbers and murderers around. The truth, though, is far more complex than the legend. And the heaven they've imagined may in fact be worse than the hell they sought to escape. The Heavenly Table is gritty, electrifying and weirdly funny. It cements Donald Ray Pollock's place among America's best contemporary novelists.
In 1917, in that sliver of border land between Georgia and Alabama, Pearl Jewett ekes out an existence as a dispossessed farmer along with his three criminally-minded sons Cane, Cob, and Chimney. Hundreds of miles away, another farming family, the good-natured Fiddlers, have been swindled out of their family fortune while reeling from the disappearance of their son Eddie, who left to fight the Germans. When a crime spree sets the Jewetts on a collision course for the Fiddlers, an unlikely--and turbulent--relationship begins between the families. In the gothic tradition of Flannery O'Connor with a heavy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino, Donald Ray Pollock pens a bloody tale of dark and horrific conflict between two families in an era not so distant from today.
KNOCKEMSTIFF is a pitch-dark and often hilarious collection of stories set in the tiny Appalachian town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, a community so deprived and diminished it no longer appears on any map. The youth of Knockemstiff grow up in the malignant shadow of their parents; raised on abuse, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, they are stunted in every possible way: emotionally, mentally, sometimes physically. They talk a lot about escape but they never so much as cross the county line. The stories in KNOCKEMSTIFF are simple and compact, blunt and brutal, but are also infused with a deep sympathy for the incapacitating loneliness of poverty, neglect and severely limited horizons. KNOCKEMSTIFF is a human, very funny and unforgettable debut from a stunning new voice in American fiction.
"More engaging than any new fiction in years." —Chuck Palahniuk An unforgettable work of fiction that peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresistibly, undeniably real. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.
Film na podstawie książki już na platformie Netflix. Bezkompromisowa, brutalna i mroczna proza największego kalibru, która trzyma w emocjonalnym uścisku aż do ostatniej strony. Niektórzy ludzie rodzą się po to, by można ich było pochować. Knockemstiff, Ohio. Willard Russell, dręczony wspomnieniami rzezi na Południowym Pacyfiku weteran wojenny, nie jest w stanie uratować swojej pięknej żony, Charlotte, od powolnej śmierci z powodu raka, bez względu na ilość krwi wylanej na swoim ołtarzu ofiarnym. Małżeństwo seryjnych morderców, Carl i Sandy Hendersonowie, przemierza amerykańskie autostrady w poszukiwaniu odpowiednich osób do sesji zdjęciowych i wyeliminowania. Bojący się pająków kaznodzieja Roy i jego kaleki pomocnik Theodore, mistrz gry na gitarze, uciekają przed wymiarem sprawiedliwości. W samym środku tego zamieszania znajduje się Arvin Eugene Russell, osierocony syn Willarda i Charlotte, poszukujący odpowiedzi... Donald Ray Pollock splata wszystkie wątki w trzymającą w napięciu fabułę, wywołującą u czytelników zaskoczenie i głębokie poruszenie.