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The Long Home
by
William Gay
In a literary voice that is both original and powerfully unsettling, William Gay tells the story of Nathan Winer, a young and headstrong Tennessee carpenter who lost his father years ago to a human evil that is greater and closer at hand than any the boy can imagine -- until he learns of it first-hand.
Hardcover, 257 pages
Published
November 1st 1999
by MacAdam/Cage Publishing
(first published 1999)
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I've finally found a contemporary author to fall in love with. His name is William Gay, and he writes like Faulkner fucking Flannery O'Connor while Erskine Caldwell is sitting in the corner playing with himself. In other words, he's God damned amazing. The Long Home was great, and I cannot wait to read his other novels.
William Gay is indeed a master of the written word in The Long Home. Every page brings a new wonder of words and storyline. His words and descriptions and attention to detail are as good as I have ever read. His characters are real and memorable. I became attached to them like family, I knew their flaws and thier goodness. As I read it, I kept waiting for a letdown in this tale, but it never came. Good to the last word.
At times the evil and wasted humanity in this story is hard to...more
At times the evil and wasted humanity in this story is hard to...more
This story about an isolated little holler somewhere in the backwoods of Alabama or North Carolina or whatever is pretty compelling. I read it with my book group and we agreed that it was pretty dim.
Most of the characters are unhappy or cursed or both and there is very little good in anyone's life.
The story centers on a murder that happens early in the telling and how so many activities for many years to come have a connection to that nighttime murder - which centered on a question o...more
Most of the characters are unhappy or cursed or both and there is very little good in anyone's life.
The story centers on a murder that happens early in the telling and how so many activities for many years to come have a connection to that nighttime murder - which centered on a question o...more
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It took a little bit of work to get into this one, but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I intended to read Gay's latest novel Twilight based on several recommendations, but I decided to start with his debut. Most reviewers here have this right. It's like Cormac McCarthy combined with Faulkner. Dark, disturbing and very Southern. It's a simple tale of love, revenge, coming of age, and good vs. evil set in rural Tennessee in the 1940s. Hardin, the evil one, is about as unlikeable as any...more
The lead-in review wraps it up pretty well. I'll take a tiny issue with it on in two areas: first, the caustic pit that opens in the first pages had me puzzled, as in, what was that all about? For me it was an annoyance. I'll leave it at that. second, yes there was "gore and blood", but I actually didn't find it excessive, nor did it detract from the plot. I am from the South yet have not taken to very many brethren writers. I am put off by the nauseating, comedic stereotypes I find. N...more
3.5, truthfully. I'm not sure what I was looking for when I requested this book for Christmas, though I'm assuming it was because I wanted something from the South. This novel reminded me a lot of Faulkner, mainly because the tone was bleak. The prose was wonderful actually, as Gay throws out these little descriptions that are just bang-on, for example, "... a deputy named Cooper got out, stood for a moment in the timeless way cops stand, sauntered to the porch with an air of halfarrogant a...more
I just don't know what it is about this guy's books. There isn't really a plot, per se. I mean, nothing monumental. Several times during my reading I said to my husband that I was pretty sure nothing at all was happening. This novel was like opening a window to a small town in the South. There is a thread that holds the story together, but the reader becomes more concerned with the characters. I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into this place, and it didn't really matter that there was...more
William Gay, in my opinion, is the best writer I have ever read. His work reads like prose, with gripping stories about people in their realm, and sometimes people who step out of their realm. This book is no different--his very clear Southern Gothic genre of writing is evident in all of his work, and The Long Home is no exception. Violence flows through this books in a constant stream throughout the story, tying it all together for an outstanding denouement. Love this book.
In the tradition of Faulkner, O'Connor and other writers in the southern gothic pantheon, William Gay writes with fierce precision about our darker angels, and the evils that besiege us. Gay's voice grabs. AFter one paragraph you know you are in the hands of an assured, confident writer. In addition to a formidable vocabulary (stygian?) he reinvents language, creates compounds that make poetic sense : hearthammer, foldup, halfbent. (Later, more dashes appear to legitimize his creations, which is...more
What can I say about my new favorite author? I have read all of William Gay's works now, and am left with disappointment that I do not have a backlog of more books that I can pick up willy-nilly and start to read. I am a big fan of McCarthy, Faulkner, O'Connor and author great authors, however (and I know I am akin to getting crushes and fascinations that change monthly) William Gay is not a flavor of the week, year or decade. I feel that his writing will stand the test of time and become classi...more
This novel is very much in the Southern tradition, and I mean that with the utmost respect and admiration. It's Faulkneresque (I'm not breaking any new ground in calling it that), but in the best way. The characters and setting are wonderful--I'd give the novel five stars, but the ending bothered me. The climax/resolution is brought about by a character other than the protagonist. There are a handful of central characters (one could probably argue who the protagonist really is), but the one ...more
In his short story “The Valley,” Rick Bass writes, “I wake up smiling sometimes because I have all my days left to live in this place.” I know exactly what that’s like. William Gay knows exactly what that’s like too.
5 stars in a prayerful kind of way. Hardin and Oliver’s final showdown made my fingers twitch, it’s so good. It didn’t catch and pass Provinces of Night because I love the Bloodworths beyond reason, but The Long Home shares all the essential DNA.
5 stars in a prayerful kind of way. Hardin and Oliver’s final showdown made my fingers twitch, it’s so good. It didn’t catch and pass Provinces of Night because I love the Bloodworths beyond reason, but The Long Home shares all the essential DNA.
I give the prose, the writing 4 or 4.5 stars; the plot maybe a 3. I should probably give the plot a higher star since it's a Southern story, set in the South, full of lots of folks just going about doing what they do. Things do tend to simmer supper slowly in the South; it's only later, looking back, that you realize something did, in fact, happen.
A good read.
A good read.
Adam
rated it
William Gay writes a distinctive version of southern gothic. Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee novels is obviously the model with almost episodic descriptions of small town and country stacked up into a tale seemingly plucked from the Old Testament, some dark forgotten Grimm’s fairy, or Greek tragedy. Gay adds a comic voice and handling of characters. His dialogue like Daniel Woodrell’s is almost too clever at points and some of poetic descriptions can approach McCarthy parody and a lot of this novel ...more
Kevin
rated it
Recommends it for:
Southern Goth fans
Recommended to Kevin by:
a bookstore owner in Hohenwald, TN
Scratches the itch I have for books Faulkner and McCarthy-like, though sometimes the hand feels a bit too familiar. It’s not the story – boy unknowingly comes to work for the killer of his father, falls in love with his step-daughter, mayhem ensues – but the prose that occasionally feels imitation rather than homage. But, for a first novel, it delivers a hefty wallop on all fronts. Why, I wonder, are books by Gay so hard to come by in stores?
Disclosure: I can't claim impartiality on this one, as I'm in the process of adapting it (with Jedidiah Ayres) into screenplay form. But damn, it's good, and it's been a real pleasure to read and reread it as we try and do it justice in that other, unforgiving format.
This book is bare-lightbulb gritty, bloody, gothic and utterly wonderful. To me, it joins in the Southern Gothic tradition, and the setting and mix of religion, money, power and reputation make for a riveting read.
I really tried reading this one and have since loaned it out for a much brighter person to try. Very hard to follow so I quit.
William Gay is a pure, natural Southern writer. His novels have remarkable poise, I think.
Though I'm not usually one for meaningless comparisons, the phrase "a more perfect Faulkner" doesn't seem far off when talking about William Gay. The Long Home is the perfect hybridization of contemporary writing and Southern Gothicism. Dark and epic in its scale, the novel is tempered by a sense of the grotesquely humorous. In addition, William Gay is, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, one of the best contemporary writers alive, and in The Long Home, he manages to craft...more
The author is an octogenarian living in Hohenwald.
Most incendiary prologue about bootlegging EVER!
William Gay has an amazing gift for language.
A really dark and sinsiter book.
Watch my full review on:http://www.youtube.com/user/1book1review
Watch my full review on:http://www.youtube.com/user/1book1review
A long drawn out story of life in a small town in 1943. Youond Nathan becomes a carpenter and works for the man, Hardin, who 10 yrs ago killed his father. Nathan doesn't know this though. He thinks his father up and left one day. His mother becomes quite bitter because of this. Nathan falls for a yound lady who lives at Hardin's place, which is a bar. Hardon doesn't approve and makes things difficult.
I didnt like this one as much as Provinces of Night. Maybe if I had an audio version of it, I would have liked it better. I will give it another chance when i have audio.
great read!
WOW
Incredible writing. I've loved Flannery O'Connor and Southern writers. William Gay is in the tradition of O'Connor and Faulkner.
An excellent revival of the Southern Gothic tradition featuring violence and lust in the backwoods of Tennessee.
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William Gay is the author of the novels Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and Twilight and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. He is the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship. Gay lives in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
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