false 416937 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 416937 7 1281738 4 6 2001 Chalktown total:123|5:12|4:41|3:40|2:22|1:8| 123 396 190 20 3519 3.47 1243 119 34043218 1006442 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.20 117 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 1 false Sun Sep 28 11:23:34 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 28 11:32:52 -0700 2008
Let's see. The title is Chalktown, but tha...more...]]> 34118510 973665 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 1 false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 29 08:41:06 -0700 2008 Fri Feb 20 23:57:55 -0800 2009 more...]]> 26789594 290848 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 3 1 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Wed Jul 09 15:12:32 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 09 15:17:07 -0700 2008
It also contains one of my favorite lines of all times with the malapropism used by his father to explain the child's cond...more...]]> 16382913 835968 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 1 1 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Feb 25 21:51:14 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 21:53:42 -0800 2008 The story is basically about a kid who takes off with his disabled brother on his back and ends up in "Chalktown" where people communicate on chalkbo...more...]]> 47862699 1400289 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 0 false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Mar 01 00:05:53 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 00:09:32 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 78328227 749613 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 0 false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Nov 19 10:50:44 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 10:52:22 -0800 2009 44514401 1832562 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 4 0 true Tue Jan 27 09:03:19 -0800 2009 Tue Apr 21 06:18:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 62218649 904847 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 3 0 false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 11:26:03 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 11:26:40 -0700 2009 23732304 1206706 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 4 0 false Wed Jun 04 19:29:12 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 04 19:34:36 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5591789 340113 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 3 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Mon Sep 03 13:23:22 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 17 08:36:37 -0800 2009 the sound and the fury, but easier to read. an oddly fascinating little piece of southern gothic surrealism. i think i made that te...more...]]> 12073138 762553 1292643 078686656X 9780786866564 1 <![CDATA[Chalktown : A Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182544665m/1292643.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1292643.Chalktown_A_Novel 3.40 5 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 1 0 false Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Jan 09 10:53:45 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 09 10:55:28 -0800 2008 3396658 177158 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 0 false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Jul 22 23:35:30 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 22 23:37:35 -0700 2007 32852232 1245171 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 4 0 false Sun Sep 14 11:56:44 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 11:58:12 -0700 2008 9419945 634626 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 4 0 false Wed Nov 21 22:50:18 -0800 2007 Sat Sep 27 21:17:31 -0700 2008 8353206 364245 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 2 1 false Sun Oct 28 12:10:38 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 28 15:00:26 -0700 2007 28280641 1082601 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 0 0 false Fri Jul 25 12:23:31 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 25 12:23:49 -0700 2008 13085873 811224 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 5 0 false Mon Jan 21 14:41:36 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 21 14:42:00 -0800 2008 27371126 175108 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 5 0 false Tue Jul 15 18:31:54 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 18:32:28 -0700 2008 3317659 205962 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 3 0 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Jul 20 09:41:21 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 20 09:41:37 -0700 2007 64645462 2445860 416937 0743442504 9780743442503 19 <![CDATA[Chalktown]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174562799m/416937.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/416937.Chalktown 3.22 123 Chalktown is a rutted, meandering dirt road that winds its way past the murky waterways and through the one-shop towns and backwoods of George County, Mississippi. It's also a red flag to anyone looking for a good dose of surreal Southern gothic. Here is the isolated shack of a disintegrating white-trash family, there the village dwellers who communicate solely by writing notes on the chalkboards in their front yards. One character is grotesquely scarred by an adult bout with chicken pox, while others are eaten up by less identifiable diseases and appetites. Dreams are pursued, discarded, and eerily enacted, always in the sort of luscious, graphic prose you would expect from the author of Mother of Pearl.

Perhaps the term family is a misnomer for the Sheehands, a bunch of misfits drawn together by impulse and wrenched apart by hope, desire, and murder. Fairy, the philandering father camped out in an old school bus, can't extricate himself from the burden of "women and their sticky flaws." His wife, Susan-Blair, is slowly burying herself beneath other people's possessions in her makeshift consignment store, even as she neglects her children and chats it up with the ever-present Christ of her Pentecostal upbringing. No wonder 16-year-old Hezekiah sets off down the road to Chalktown in the opening pages of the novel, carrying his disabled brother in a backpack. His encounters along the way make for a Robert Altman-like series of takes on the bizarre nature of reality in George County.

The literary landscape of the Deep South is, of course, teeming with eccentric characters. Yet Haynes's are so fleshed-out that the reader is left feeling almost crowded, like (to quote Susan-Blair) a "durn closet full a somebody else's coats. Coats put there by people who went on to someplace else, some other thing." The author is no less gifted at conveying a sense of place. She uses the colorful brushstrokes of a painter--which she also happens to be--to imbue this story with a dark, sultry, and unmistakably Southern feel. The result is a captivating, consuming read. --S. Ketchum

]]> 3 0 false Thu Jul 23 08:48:55 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 23 08:49:22 -0700 2009 8 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=416937