oh, great. another book i can never recommend to elizabeth...

this book is vicious. understand that. this is a hyper-violent book, filled with completely unsavory characters in a filthy landscape where crimes are committed with breathtaking casualness.

and i gotta confess, i loved it.

because that's not all it is. this isn't just gratuitous violence for shock value and testing of the reader's limits. there is also that heartbreaking thing i love so much in my literature: small-town desperation. th More...

This review has been revised and can be found at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

Grim, dark, unsparing, and good.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. More...

Read the Donald Ray Pollock Recommends Books page, put together from an interview i had with Donald Ray Pollock Here.

Beware some brutal characters contained within this story.
The name Pollock strikes up images in my head of the paintings of Jackson Pollock the painter, that splatter art. Well this Pollock is just as creative with his storytelling that leaves a deep branding in your mind and soul of a human stain of evil characters, that will stay with you well after you have finished this book. More...

The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock's tales from a ghost town

“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A

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Jesus wept, but this is the real goods people -- gritty, raw, uncompromising prose that snaps and bites at your soft spots. I find it curious that so many people have shelved Pollock's sophomore novel as horror, because while it is horrifying in places, and deals with some chilling characters, horror it is not. In his review of Pollock's debut Knockemstiff, Kemper uses the terms redneck noir and hick lit and that's much closer to capturing what this novel is offering to anyone who dares pick it More...

Gritty crime thrillers* are not generally my cup of tea, be they in fancy pants, shiny new hardcovers in the Literature section or shitty paperbacks in the mass-market rows of shame where all the bored housewives hang out. There seems to more often than not be this sort of straight to the point, unsalted cracker style to the writing which leaves me feeling dissatisfied. I mean, sure, I know some people in real life who parrot the same words and stories, use "like" and "ummm" as ways to pause in More...

Willard Russell prays over a prayer log for his cancer-ridden wife with his son, Arvin. A spider-eating preacher is convinced he can bring back the dead. A husband and wife pick up hitchhikers, photograph them, and kill them. How will all of their paths intersect?

Knockemstiff was one of my favorite books this year and I was anxious for Donald Ray Pollock to try his hand at a novel. Now I'm anxious for him to write a couple hundred more.

The Devil All the Time dips into the same well as Knockemsti More...

November 2011

Donald Ray Pollock is back! And while The Devil All the Time begins and ends near Knockemstiff, Ohio, the setting of his first collection of stories, Pollock proves he's no one-trick pony (which is good, 'cause the folks down there in the holler eat one-trick ponies for breakfast).

Here, a number of hard-living characters leave Ohio--a scarred orphan sent to relatives down south, a pair of down-on-their luck preachers on the run from the law, married serial killers with a thing for More...

If you're a fan of crime fiction and don't mind when it bleeds over into southern gothic, then do not miss Donald Ray Pollock's first novel, The Devil All the Time. Critics and readers are comparing his work about the sinning and redemption that takes place by sweaty characters in small hick towns to Flannery O'Connor's. That's a spot-on comparison, especially if compared to O'Connor's novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, but I would add that some of the more repugnant scenes remind m More...

A quick and nerve wracking ride. Brutal and raw. An artfully violent parody about the human condition. It's a book that will make you laugh while you cringe. It's a book that begs you to ask yourself: "Why am I so attracted to such corroded and perverted characters ?" It's a book that begs you to read it-and a book that makes you feel bad for doing so. You might not recommend it to your righteous mom or your little brother. You feel sleazy about turning the pages, but Pollock pulls you in. You w More...

It's been two days since I finished this one.
I am 30% of the way through another novel now, and I still can't get
The Devil All the Time out of my mind.

Wow, where to start? This is an incredibly fast read, just over 260 pages, but there are so many turns to the plotlines that, at one point late in the novel, I was reminded of one development that seemed so long ago that I thought it was from another book!

Donald Ray Pollock has done what I envy in only a few authors' skills (Ruth Rendell's A Sight More...

Pollock wrote with strong prose a powerful,haunting story about residents in two rural communities. It was different how he had many POV characters, some that you read about in few pages and never read about them again. It made the story less predictable and more real with many authentic characters. There were only a few clear main characters.

I was deeply moved by the stories of some of the characters, their situations. Others like Carl Henderson was sick in mundane,creepy way and not just anoth More...

This was a tough book to rate due to its combination of amazing writing and the cast of characters ranging from utterly dispeakable to somewhat unsavory to just beaten down by life into a human shaped mud puddle. I really don't know what to even compare this book too. Pollock manages to write these hideous humans with such unflinching brutality yet in such a matter of fact way, it's sort of like watching a car wreck and being unable to look away, spellbound by the brutality of existence. Rural c More...

It's really more a 4.5 star but since Good Reads is not Netflix I selected a 4. I'm not usually one to round up although this book was phenomenal. I wouldn't recommend it for my faint of heart reading friends or ones that dislike a good amount of violence and a book saturated with depravity. It has hints of McCarthy but is more accessible and faster to digest. (Don't get me wrong I love McCarthy) I myself, do have a need to fill some of my reading time with stories that some might find unsavory. More...

The writing's really more at a three-star level (which rating I gave the same author's fine but overrated Knockemstiff), but the construction satisfies and I dig Pollock's moxy. Promotional comparisons to Flannery and Cormac only make the book look weak, because what keeps me from embracing Pollock is that, for all his true grit, he doesn't seem to be a naturally gifted craftsman of prose. On the other hand, unpretty plainness and blunt declaration is a suitable style for a book about such ugly More...

Loved this one. Very reminiscent of William Gay and Jim Thompson with maybe some Geek Love mixed in. I'd thought I might be giving it five stars, but the first half of the book felt more adventurous and with sharper prose, then those things kind of tailed off near the end as it became obvious these narratives were going to converge expectedly. Still, I'm glad to see DRP getting some great press, especially for subject matter like this, which doesn't hit the mainstream often enough, but is right More...

This enthralling first novel from Donald Ray Pollock, the author of the story collection Knockemstiff, will grab you by the back of the neck and rivet you to the story as you read of Arvin Eugene Russell's growing up in 1960s Ohio and West Virginia. Surrounded by evil and violence and a father who wrestles with the devil all the time, Arvin can't escape a violent life himself. Other unforgettable characters are a husband-and-wife team of serial killers and a spider-handling preacher and his whee More...

Oh my! Oh my goodness! This book is so brutal and gritty and well written. I am afraid to admit I've read it and afraid to recommend it to anyone. The content is so vile and horrible it makes one sick. I don't want to say much more but if you have a weak stomach, or don't want to read about murders, prostitution, animal sacrifices, suicide, masturbation, pornography, pedophilia, etc. Don't read this book. If you are curious, go read a synopsis of the book and read other peoples reviews. I moved More...

The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollock

A post World War two beginning extending to the 1960’s, this story is an extraordinary characterization of Appalachian poverty.

Growing up in a steel town and teaching in a tiny impoverished coal town in Pennsylvania gave me the background to find the characters in this book believable. As a college student, drifting down to West Virginia I drank n some pretty despicable places. None were quite as despicable as described in the book. The scenery was fa More...

Hey, parents, having problems getting you kids to behave in church? Let them spend a Sunday with Willard Russell. Willard isn’t a preacher, and he doesn’t have one of those big mall-like mega churches. What Willard has is a log in the woods. That’s right, a damn log in the woods. A prayer log if you will, and he’s hung up some crosses around it, and he makes sure that his son Arvin is out there all the time praying with all he’s got. Don’t mind all that dried blood and animal bones. Willard thin More...

Arvin is a young boy, orphaned after his father takes his life when his wife dies of cancer. Arvin goes to live with his grandmother and adopted sister Lenora - a young girl his grandmother took in when she was just a baby after her mother was killed and her father was never found. Arvin learned from his father at an early age when to fight back and when to walk away.

Lenora's father it turns out, is living in Florida as a circus geek of sorts with his wheelchair-bound friend Theodore. Both are a More...

The book was even darker and bleaker than I imagined, with barely any redemption present among the disturbed, violent, and unfortunate cast of characters. There is also an undertone of misogyny that I couldn't reconcile myself to--all sex that does happen is driven by hate, violence, and severe power imbalances. While the cast of characters is colorful (in its own warped way), I gave up caring about most of them when it was apparent their lives were headed nowhere but towards further misery, vio More...

Sure, it's one of the dirtiest, grimiest books you'll read. In its first fifty pages are two human sacrifices, a beating so savage its victim "sits around with a coffee can hanging from his neck to catch his slobbers", and crucifixes dripping with roadkill maggots. And that's before the serial killers get started. Details magazine listed the book's Five Most Disturbing Passages. That old warning to readers of a sensitive disposition may hold true more than ever. But Pollock paints so rich a pict More...

Това е най-маккартиевата книга, която Кормак Маккарти не е писал. Толкова близо, колкото е (не)възможно за дебютен роман на автор, влязъл в литературата на 50+ години.
Подобно на съдията Холдън, Антон Чигур и Апокалипсиса, и тук някакво неизискващо обяснения и оправдания зло тихо припълзява във въздуха, пуска корени в главите и историите и променя самата тъкан на малкото заспало градче нейде в Охайо или пък в Западна Вирджиния, където, всеки знае, никога нищо не се случва.

Donald Ray Pollock's sophomore effort, this time a novel: think Jim Thompson meets Flannery O'Connor, and then Truman Capote drops in for supper.

Just one note: assiduously avoid this book if you're one of those readers who dislikes books in which you don't "care about the characters." As in Pollock's previous effort, Knockemstiff (which also figures in this novel), you'll be hard-pressed to find a single genuinely likable character in The Devil All the Time. But as in Knockemstiff, you won't fo More...

All the grittiness and depravity of Knockemstiff but with a touch of religious influence, good and bad. Perhaps one of more interesting elements of the novel is seeing how Pollock is able to wrap up everything at the end, tying each character to one another. Sure, I imagine there might be some who take issue with the way Pollock ultimately manages this effect, but he does do so without any real great stretch. Carl and Sandy Henderson are the centerpiece of the novel, however, and in them, Polloc More...

Re-read. Even better the second time around.


“Maggots dripped from the trees and crosses like squirming drops of white fat.”

I was warned this is not a book for the faint hearted. I wholeheartedly agree. The author makes an impression.

Willard sacrifices animals to his “prayer log” in an attempt to save his wife from cancer. Roy, travelling preacher, and his pedophile sidekick are running from the law. Carl is a serial killer who takes photos of his wife with his victims.

Pollack’s characters are de More...

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Pollock's first novel, set in and around rural Ohio, is not for the squeamish or sensitive. Beginning with a soldier's return from the brutal Pacific theater of World War Two, the reader is soon introduced to an America absent of the peace and prosperity generally associated with the post-war years. Instead, we are taken on a ride through the darkest corners of the country, encountering (among other things) ritualized sacrifices, corrupt and perverse small town preachers, and a married couple on More...

Single-handedly the most disturbing fiction I have ever read. What's more disturbing is i could not put it down....I felt significant amounts of horror in being so taken with this read. You finish it, and want to tell someone about it but then you realize how twisted it all is and how whoever you tell will maybe judge you for liking such a demented and creepy read - there's almost a shame associated with recommending it. But all the more reason to go ahead and throw your stamp of approval on it. More...