Blackwood
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bedford Square Publishers
Published:10th Dec '20
£8.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£12.99(9780857303905)
A TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town....
The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town.
When a vagabond family appears on the outskirts, when twin boys and a woman go missing, disappearing beneath the vines, a man with his own twisted past struggles to untangle the secrets in the midst of the town trauma.
This is a landscape of fear and ghosts, of regret and violence. It is a landscape transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding terrible secrets deeper still. Blackwood is the evil in the woods, the wickedness that lurks in all of us.
If you're a fan of Southern or Rural Noir - James Lee Burke, Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, the literary children of Flannery O'Connor - you'll feel uncomfortably at home. I enjoyed Blackwood so much that I picked up Farris Smith's last two novels. Desperation Road, his gripping 2017 tale of outsiders and revenge in Mississippi, is high-quality, too. Better still is The Fighter (2018), a powerful and touching story about a punch-drunk bareknuckle boxer. Brutality and tenderness fight it out on every page. Though Farris Smith has five novels under his belt, he is little known in Britain. That ought to change: let some Mississippian mayhem, murder and misery into your lives -- Robbie Millen * The Times *
Smith is emerging as one of the great chroniclers of America's dispossessed. A haunting and utterly compelling read -- John Williams * Mail on Sunday *
A menacing taste of Southern Noir. Three strangers enter the small town of Red Blub, Mississippi and things start to get nasty and odd... -- Robbie Millen * The Times Best Books of 2020 *
Michael Farris Smith's outstanding new novel, Blackwood, makes a strong case for Mississippi to be considered the most disturbing state in America, if not the world * Strong Words *
In Smith's haunting, engrossing latest (after The Fighter), strangers awaken an evil force lurking in a small Southern town...Smith's meditation on the darkness of the human heart offers a moving update to the Southern gothic tradition. * Publishers Weekly *
ISBN: 9780857304063
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages