Staff Pick
Donald Ray Pollock produces yet another brilliant book with The Heavenly Table: a bleak, sordid story of poverty, violence, and misery, but with a sliver of wistful hope so slender, it's just barely within reach.
The Jewett brothers stumble into outlaw-hood (almost against their better judgment), but embrace the role once they have it. After their father dies and an unfortunate kink in their plans occurs, they try to make a desperate run for Canada from the deep south. Hunted by the law and a host of laymen hungry for the reward money, the Jewetts maneuver through one dark crisis after another. Snatching the opportunity to rest for a few days, the brothers hole up in a tiny town and relax — perhaps a bit too much.
Despite what your head knows to be true, your heart deceives you into empathy for these lost boys. This whole business of making readers fall in love with characters they would usually find repugnant is some sort of alchemy, or chemistry, or magic. Whatever it is, Pollock's got it in spades.
The last 75 pages of this book were so harrowing, I vacillated between abject fear of what I knew was about to happen, and an insistent urge to turn another page.
The "heavenly table" of the title is the reward their father is counting upon after death: a table filled with a never-ending abundance of delicious food, a blessing he can never find on earth. A look at the consequences and effects of unrelenting poverty, absent parents, bullying, racism, pure evil, narcissism, and moral bankruptcy, The Heavenly Table is a distillation of all that is ugly within the human race, and Pollock is your tour guide to Hell. Whatever you do, do not miss this book — it is a mesmerizing read. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com