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Winter's Bone: A Novel

by Daniel Woodrell

Winter's Bone: A Novel Cover

About This Book

Synopses & Reviews

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ISBN13: 9780316057554
ISBN10: 031605755x
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Meet Ree Dolly — not since Mattie Ross stormed her way through Arkansas in True Grit has a young girl so fiercely defended her loved ones.

Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks and belongs to a large extended family. On a bitterly cold day, Ree, who takes care of her two younger brothers as well as her mother, learns that her father has skipped bail. If he fails to appear for his upcoming court date on charges of cooking crystal meth, his family will lose their house, the only security they have.

Winter's Bone is the story of Ree's quest to bring her father back, alive or dead. Her goal had been to leave her messy world behind and join the army, where "everybody had to help keep things clean." But her father's disappearance forces her to first take on the outlaw world of the Dolly family. Ree's plan is elemental and direct: find her father, teach her little brothers how to fend for themselves, and escape a downward spiral of misery.

Asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake, but Ree perseveres. Her courage and purity of spirit make her a truly compelling figure. She learns that what she had long considered to be the burdens imposed on her by her family are, in fact, the responsibilities that give meaning and direction to her life. Her story is made palpable by Woodrell, who is "that infrequent thing, a born writer" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Review:

"Woodrell flirts with — but doesn't succumb to — cliche in his eighth novel, a luminescent portrait of the poor and desperate South that drafts 16-year-old Ree Dolly, blessed with 'abrupt green eyes,' as its unlikely heroine. Ree, too young to escape the Ozarks by joining the army, cares for her two younger brothers and mentally ill mother after her methamphetamine-cooking father, Jessup, disappears. Recently arrested on drug charges, Jessup bonded out of jail by using the family home as collateral, but with a court date set in one week's time and Jessup nowhere to be found, Ree has to find him — dead or alive — or the house will be repossessed. At its best, the novel captures the near-religious criminal mania pervasive in rural communities steeped in drug culture. Woodrell's prose, lyrical as often as dialogic, creates an unwieldy but alluring narrative that allows him to draw moments of unexpected tenderness from predictable scripts: from Ree's fearsome, criminal uncle Teardrop, Ree discovers the unshakable strength of family loyalty; from her friend Gail and her woefully dependant siblings, Ree learns that a faith in kinship can blossom in the face of a bleak and flawed existence." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"If you're going to read 'Winter's Bone,' it's best to plan on reading it twice — once to get the feel of the thing and once to figure out who is who, who's got the power here and what opaque and arcane rules hold this world together.

The world in question is Southeastern hill country, the Ozarks, where the population has lived almost as long as there have been white folks on the continent...." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) The men, lounging in their ramshackle houses or dilapidated doublewides, appear to be feckless, savage, foul-tempered layabouts. If their great-grandfathers made their livings distilling moonshine, they rouse themselves from time to time to cook up a batch of crank. Their contempt for the law is boundless; they treat their women roughly. Their codes of honor and silence and family are as complex (and difficult to negotiate) as a badly written city ordinance.

In the hands of a conventionally educated urban author, these characterizations would seem intolerably condescending and elitist, but Daniel Woodrell was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks and still makes his home in the Ozarks near the Arkansas line. He's not taking cheap shots; he's reporting life as he sees it.

Ree Dolly, the heroine, is a tough little girl of 16 who lives across a creek from a flock of slack-jawed relatives up in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Her father, Jessup, one of the best crank cookers in the region, has been increasingly shifty and pasty-faced of late. And now he's run off, after uttering these words: 'Start lookin" for me soon as you see my face. "Til then, don't even wonder.' He left as winter was coming on, no food in the cupboards, no money, not even any firewood for their potbellied stove, leaving Ree responsible for herself, two younger brothers and a mother, who's decided — according to Ree — to go crazy so that she won't have to face this impossibly hard life.

It could be worse. At least they've got the house that's been in the family for generations. But Jessup has already spent time in jail and is due to be tried again. He's put up the house as part of his court bond, and if he doesn't make an upcoming court date, the pitiful little family soon will be evicted. It's true that when the first people came here, they lived in caves, but Ree doesn't relish that possibility. She must find her errant dad or risk homelessness in the harsh Ozark winter.

That's the back story, the setup. The action plays out like an old-fashioned, hard-boiled novel. Ree, like Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, plays the interlocutor, visiting one mysterious or vicious character after another, asking the same questions: Where is her father, and how can she get him back? Each time, she's warned off by various threats, lies or intimidation. She visits her Uncle Teardrop, who had almost half his face melted off in a methamphetamine explosion. She breaches the frightening compound owned by Thump Milton, who makes her sit on her haunches in a sleeting rain for an hour and then won't see her. And she drives to an actual village with streets to question her dad's old girlfriend.

She gets nowhere. The ones who talk don't know, and the ones who know don't talk. But, as Ree is fond of saying, her family name is Dolly, and the Dollys are the toughest clan around. Soon enough, she realizes her dad is dead, but she must be able to prove it or be thrust out into the snow with two small boys and her crazy mom.

Meanwhile, Ree teaches her brothers to shoot and gut squirrels. She washes her mother's hair. She scrounges money for groceries. She spends time with Gail, her best friend from before they dropped out of high school. (Gail's married now to a 19-year-old oaf and has a new baby.) And day after day, Ree struggles with all the inconvenience and humiliations of dire poverty.

'Winter's Bone' revolves around questions of grit, courage, authenticity, a willingness to face the pure physical unpleasantness of the way things are. 'Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat,' Woodrell writes. 'Meat hung from trees across the creek.' It's meat she needs, but it doesn't look like she'll get any. Her half-starving brothers have been crying for lack of meat, but she almost twists the ear off the one who wants to ask for some. When she teaches the boys to shoot, she insists they do their own gutting. When something terrible happens to her, she's reduced to little more than a slab of pounded meat. And by the end of the novel, she must prove herself by holding firm to some of the creepiest, most unpleasant meat of all. That's what her life comes down to.

You could ask some carping questions about all of this. If all the people in these hollers occupy themselves making drugs, how come the standard of living isn't higher? If her brothers have been crying for protein and getting nothing but mush, how come Ree hasn't been out and about, shooting squirrel all along? Most important, in a world full of ignorant, antisocial savages, how did Ree turn out to be some kind of rustic Joan of Arc? (You can't say it's because she's a woman, because women commit some of the most heinous crimes in this narrative.) And it certainly can't be how she was raised, because her grandmother beat her with a strop, her father was a philandering dope fiend and her mother is nuts. I think the author just wanted her to be that way, the way Raymond Chandler wanted his Philip Marlowe to be a knight in a world full of craven churls.

Still, there's a lot of density and interest here. The author is obsessed by the weirdness of incongruity: the way the little boys watch fancy English ways on public television while their own lives drown in squalor; the way Ree and Gail bicker over processed grated cheese in the general store; the way the most villainous mountain women can be felled not by gunshot but by that most subtle and feminine of weapons — round after round of righteous gossip. I don't know if this is a book that the reader is supposed to (BEG IAL)like or not. Woodrell simply shows us a world, the raw meat of it. If we can't stomach his reality, it's our problem, not his." Reviewed by Carolyn See, who may be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:

"One runs out of superlatives to describe Woodrell's fiction. We called his last novel, The Death of Sweet Mister (2001), 'word perfect.' If that's true — and it is — this one is word perfecter." Booklist (Starred Review)

Review:

"[Woodrell's] Old Testament prose and blunt vision have a chilly timelessness that suggests this novel will speak to readers as long as there are readers, and as long as violence is practiced more often than hope or language." David Bowman, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"[P]acks a kind of biblical, Old West, Cormac McCarthy wallop — hard and deep....To call Woodrell...the Next Big Thing in literary crime fiction only can mean this: We are way behind. He is the current big thing. And not to be missed." Cleveland Plain Dealer

Review:

"Woodrell burrows ever deeper into the heart of Ozark darkness, weaving a tale both haunting in its simplicity and mythic in scope.... most profound and haunting work yet." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"[S]pare but evocative prose....[Woodrell] depicts the landscape, people, and dialects with stunning realism. A compelling testament to how people survive in the worst of circumstances." School Library Journal

Review:

"[A]nother stunner....Diehard fans of the author will not be disappointed with Winter's Bone. Those unacquainted with his work...are in for a unique reading experience that will doubtless send them scurrying off to find more of his novels." Kansas City Star

Review:

"[C]ompact, atmospheric and deeply felt....Woodrell's novels...tap a ferocious, ancient manner of storytelling, shrewdly combining a poet's vocabulary with the vivid, old-fashioned vernacular of the backwoods. They're forces of nature." Seattle Times

Review:

"Woodrell's eighth novel exposes the tragedy of crystal meth in rural America in all its brutal ugliness in language that is both razor sharp and grimly gorgeous. Highly recommended." Library Journal

Synopsis:

When Ree Dolly's father skips bail, the 16-year-old knows if he doesn't show up to answer the drug charges against him, her family will lose their home. Her goal had been to leave her messy life of poverty and join the army, but first she must find her father, teach her little brothers to fend for themselves, and escape a downward spiral of misery.

About the Author

Daniel Woodrell was born and now lives in the Missouri Ozarks. He left school and enlisted in the Marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor's degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. Winter's Bone is his eighth novel.

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: JeanValJean1960, March 21, 2007 (view all comments by JeanValJean1960)
Outstanding, simply outstanding! Having lived in the Ozarks for a spell, I can clearly visualize Ree and tread the same heart wrenching secret path she walked. The operative word to describe Ree is courage. She's a character with a heart and the strength to follow it. Kudos to Woodrell for capturing the lonesome soul of the Ozarks.
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: sheree butsch, January 25, 2007 (view all comments by sheree butsch)
this is a good, hard, book that tells a great story of one strong and determined girl to save her home and family.
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: damon, August 16, 2006 (view all comments by damon)
went into this book with some pretty high expectations and I was not disappointed. Woodrell manages to paint the bleakest of scenes with beautiful prose. While the subjects are lowly, the language stays lyrical (if only Denis Johnson did the same).

There have been some comparisons to Faulkner and they make perfect sense. The author shows an incredible amount of skill in description as well as tension. And I can't ignore the way Woodrell manages to catch that Southern Missouri dialogue without painting them as stereotypical hillbillies.

My only complaints might be that the novel is so short (I would have read much more) and an unnecessary note of optimism at the end.

It is a great thing to read a book that lives up to the reviews, and there's nothing much better than finishing a good book.
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780316057554
Author:: Woodrell, Daniel
Publisher:: Little Brown and Company
Subject:: General
Subject:: Fathers and daughters
Subject:: Teenage girls
Publication Date:: August 7, 2006
Binding:: Hardcover
Language:: English
Pages:: 193
Dimensions:: 8.58x5.78x.83 in. .72 lbs.

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