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Winter's Bone

Daniel Woodrell

3.92 · Rating details · 27,862 ratings · 3,568 reviews

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.

Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) ...more

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Hardcover, 193 pages

Published July 20th 2010 by Little, Brown and Company (first published 2006)

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Apr 30, 2010 karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: grit-lit, table, favorites

yes.

this is pretty much why i read, to find a book like this amongst all the three-star so-so's. and it wasn't love at first sight (which might make the experience even better; i didn't love winesberg, ohio right out of the gate either) - i had some reservations from the first page, when the poetic quality of the language seemed forced and i wasn't going to deal with 200 pages of:
"three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside...", or "Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk yes.

this is pretty much why i read, to find a book like this amongst all the three-star so-so's. and it wasn't love at first sight (which might make the experience even better; i didn't love winesberg, ohio right out of the gate either) - i had some reservations from the first page, when the poetic quality of the language seemed forced and i wasn't going to deal with 200 pages of:
"three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside...", or "Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes..." but except for a few instances of striving-to-be-musical prose (heidi klum would say "we question your taste level" and brad becker would say "i'll taste her level"), this is utterly gorgeous, and is already on my mental hall of fame list.

of course it brings up a list of names in my head - they are unavoidable comparisons: ron rash, cormac mccarthy, castle freeman jr, - people who write about misbegotten people deep in the hard-lined appalachian/ozark regions without romanticizing the harsh realities of survival. but it's more than that. woodrell has created a sort of ozarkian godfather story with its unspoken rules about loyalty and power and family above all else where people live and die by deeply embedded codes of honor. even the supporting characters here speak volumes and any one of them could stand alone in their own novel.

but the action centers around sixteen-year old ree. she of the milk skin. and this character is, i think, what everyone is thinking they have found in that dragon-tattooed salander, who i found cartoonish. ree is a sixteen-year-old girl who is genuinely hard, not just clinically affectless. she is resourceful but not, god help us, plucky. she is pissed off but not in an anarchic teenaged way. she is no wide-eyed innocent, but she isn't psychotic, either. she's just a human surviving within her inherited power system, raising her two little brothers and caring for her mad mother, sacrificing her love and dignity without regret, but with necessary resignation. yet she does show emotion, even though it is a luxury in her situation. every scene she has with gail is understated, but packs an emotional wallop. (yeah, i know, i hate that expression and i'm not sure why i used it. blame the heat)

this is no morality tale, it is just a slice of a life that is happening, unsung, in america. it's too short a book for me to say much about without rooning it for everyone, but i loved it like crazy, and will have to get all his other, out of print, books into my hands...

come to my blog! ...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Nataliya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: i-also-saw-the-film, 2012-reads, awesome-kickass-heroines, location-is-the-true-protagonist

Reading this book made me realize how FRIGGIN' SHELTERED my life has been. To me, Winter's Bone reads just like a nightmarish dystopia. To millions of people, apparently, it's life.

Ree Dolly is incredibly tough and hardened by life - much more than you'd expect from a sixteen-year-old girl.

"She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle. She would never cry where her

Reading this book made me realize how FRIGGIN' SHELTERED my life has been. To me, Winter's Bone reads just like a nightmarish dystopia. To millions of people, apparently, it's life.

Ree Dolly is incredibly tough and hardened by life - much more than you'd expect from a sixteen-year-old girl.

"She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle. She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her."

Unlike other lauded "tough" heroines in the recent literature, her toughness is not in the "leave me the hell alone" variety of Lisbeth Salander or grumpy variety of Katniss Everdeen. Ree is tough in the true survivor way. She has no other choice - she is the oldest child in the Ozarks "bred'n buttered" family of a crystal meth cook father and a mentally unstable near-catatonic mother, with nobody else to care for her two younger brothers. And now she is this close to losing the only thing they own - their home - to the bail bondsman, unless Ree can somehow prove that her allegedly bail-jumping father is dead. And that's not an easy thing to do when the world would rather have you shut up and not ask questions.

'Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?'
'Kill me, I guess.'
'That idea has been said already. Got'ny other ones?'
'Help me. Ain't nobody said that idea yet, have they?'

But this short novel is not as much about Ree's quest to figure out what happened to her missing father - she and the reader already have a good idea what happened to Jessup Dolly - as it is about showing a fascinating albeit harrowing picture of the cruel, backwards, meth-ruled world of the Ozarks. Ree Dolly lives in a hostile, harsh, and unforgiving world that follows no law but its own. She is surrounded by distant kin members that make up the majority of this rural mountain community. But very soon she learns that blood ties do not always mean much, that there quite a few matters about which her neighbors and relatives would much rather remain tight-lipped. And they will not hesitate to do whatever they feel is necessary to silence the uncomfortable questions, even if they come from a teenage girl.

Ree is kind, smart, independent, competent, spirited, and resourceful. However, there is little future for her in this world besides meth-cooking or marry as "required by pregnancy." Ree has been harboring a dream of joining the Army "where you got to travel with a gun and they made everybody help keep things clean", where she finally, for the first time ever, can have "only her own concerns to tote." But we all know - as does Ree - that she has too much heart to do so, even if it means sacrificing her dreams for the sake of others who are her responsibility.

For men in Ree's world there seem to be two options - meth and prison. For women it's even less. There is obedience, loveless marriages, violence, and hard work.

"The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can't, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying."

The only thing that being a woman earns for you is that you probably won't be beaten half-dead and bloody by a man (unless he is "your" man, as Ree's little brother notes). But it's little consolation given that the women Ree meets do not lack viciousness. Misogyny is everywhere, and is viewed as a normal part of life. Nobody has much in this world, and women least of all. And if you are half-dead from a beating, and your uncle is about to raise mayhem, you, of course, will be the one to blame.

"Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist."

I found it scarily disturbing that Ree has naturally absorbed and internalized the laws of this bleak harsh place. When we meet her, she has an unusually strong moral compass and stubbornness to a boot, but I wonder how long it's going to be before she cracks and submits to the ways of her surroundings. After all, she is also very lonely - with her mother pretty much checked out of this world, and her best friend trapped in a marriage with no love but a little baby, and Ree misses her so very very much.

In Ree's heart there was room for more. Any evening spent with Gail was like one of the yearning stories from her sleep was happening awake. Sharing the small simple parts of life with someone who stood tall in her feelings.

I hope she finds a way out, I hope she finds a way to keep her awesome self intact, I hope she succeeds in raising her brothers the way she wants to and not the way the society expects them to be. She is definitely strong enough for that, and I hope her spine is indeed made of steel. She will need it to survive.
------------------------
Wonderful book with one of the best female characters I have seen in a while. It's rather bleak but at the same time has undertones of hope - rooted in Ree's stubborn refusal to give up. 4.5 stars, and feeling thankful that I live where I live - because I sure as hell would NOT be able to survive in Ree Dolly's world.

"I ain't leavin' you boys. Why do you think that?'
'We heard you once, talkin' 'bout the army and places we wouldn't be. Are you wantin' to leave us?'
'Naw. I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my back.'

...more

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Sep 05, 2010 Bill Kerwin rated it really liked it

Shelves: detective-mystery, gothic

In this crime thriller set in the Ozarks, 16-year-old Ree Dolly goes on a manhunt to locate her meth-cooking father, dead or alive. She needs to find him because he put their house up for collateral with the bailbondsmen, and he's due in court soon.

The Ozark atmosphere is convincing, Woodrell's prose is spare and poetic, and--most important of all--Ree Dolly is a great person to get to know. (I half hope--and half dread--that this may be the first in a series. I want to hear more of Ree, but I ...more

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Dec 25, 2015 Justin Tate rated it it was amazing

The movie is not without charm, but doesn’t come close to capturing the full scope of the novel’s bleak beauty. Family dynamics, an integral piece of the story, seem only hinted at on film. The movie’s stark, frost-bitten setting is represented only by bare branches and ski caps. In the book, you actually feel the wind chill and every degree below freezing. Most shockingly, the movie doesn’t feature a single fluff of snow.

Then there's the prose. No movie in the world can capture the perfection ...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Nancy rated it really liked it

Shelves: addiction, fiction, i-saw-the-film, shelf-inflicted, crime-mystery-thriller, library-books, award-winners, hick-lit

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

This short novel has many things I enjoy in dark fiction – quirky, dysfunctional characters, a determined heroine struggling to survive and keep her family together, a bleak setting, a sense of hopelessness, people who pay the price for their bad choices. This is a quiet story that crept up on me slowly and haunted me for days afterward.

Actually, it terrified me and made me glad I grew up in New York City. Sure, there were shootings, muggings, carjackings, and ...more

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Jan 27, 2011 Kemper rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bouchercon, modern-lit, signed-by-author, crime-mystery, 2011, rednecks, favorites

I grew up in a rural area with no shortage of poor rednecks so I thought I knew about country poverty, but the people I knew with their decayed farm houses and trailers lived like Donald Trump compared to the backwoods clan of hill folk in this book.

Ree Dolly is a 16-year old girl who dropped out of high school to take care of her crazy mother and two younger brothers. She lives in a remote part of the Ozarks where the only job opportunities are in crystal meth production. Ree plans on joining I grew up in a rural area with no shortage of poor rednecks so I thought I knew about country poverty, but the people I knew with their decayed farm houses and trailers lived like Donald Trump compared to the backwoods clan of hill folk in this book.

Ree Dolly is a 16-year old girl who dropped out of high school to take care of her crazy mother and two younger brothers. She lives in a remote part of the Ozarks where the only job opportunities are in crystal meth production. Ree plans on joining the army the second she’s old enough, and she’s trying to prepare her brothers to take care of themselves once she leaves.

Ree’s father, Jessup, hasn’t been home in weeks, but that’s nothing new so she isn’t concerned until a deputy shows up looking for him. Ree is shocked to learn that Jessup is out on bond and used their house as collateral. If he doesn’t show for his court date in a few days, Ree and her family will be homeless during a harsh winter. Ree has no choice but to start asking her extended family if they know where her father is, but this is dangerous because the closed mouth rednecks don’t like people asking questions, even if they’re kin. The only one who even kinda helps her is her crazy Uncle Teardrop who got half his head melted in a meth lab fire, and he’s not exactly reliable. Ree will soon figure out that her daddy got himself into big trouble with the family and looking for him will bring more of the same to her.

Daniel Woodrell created a stark portrait of rural poverty where shooting squirrels for supper and chopping wood for heat are still routine chores. Then he put a character you can’t help but love in the middle of it. Ree is smart and tough, but even rarer in her world, she’s managed to hang on to a sense of dignity. She has no illusions, but she isn’t cynical or cold either. She’s doing everything she can to protect her brothers and mother, and she has a touching relationship with her best friend Gail, who got pregnant and married a man she barely knows.

Short, but powerful, this a terrific novel with a heroine you won’t forget. ...more

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Aug 14, 2017 Joe Valdez rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-general

My introduction to the fiction of Daniel Woodrell is Winter's Bone, and what a strong introduction. Published in 2006, it logs somewhere between a novella and short novel at only 45,883 words, but the remnants left behind conjure such a strong sense of environment and of a gritty female protagonist struggling to survive in that environment that I felt like I'd walked a mile in her shoes, in the snow, trucking water pails, both ways. The literary ambitions of the novel are impossible to tamper ...more

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Nov 25, 2018 BlackOxford rated it really liked it

Shelves: american

An Angry Country

It’s difficult to imagine what encouraged the first English settlers to re-locate from their lives of drudgery in the Appalachian mountains to precisely the same lives of drudgery a thousand miles distant in the Ozark hills (mountains being a mere conceit). But move they did, with their traditions of inbreeding, moonshine and frontier violence.

The Ozarks, strectching over the corners of four US States, is a sort of American Kurdistan, an artificially divided country. The tourist ...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Jason rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, for-kindle, reviewed

It’s funny how my brain works. So this novel is about a strong teenage girl living in conditions of depressing destitution without a father, caring for her sibling(s) and her invalid mother, cooking for them, bathing them, getting them ready for school, and generally assuming a responsibility that far exceeds her years—she even hunts squirrel! Any of this sound familiar? Maybe I’m not the only one who was reminded of Katniss Everdeen, but what’s interesting is that both Everdeen and Ree Dolly, It’s funny how my brain works. So this novel is about a strong teenage girl living in conditions of depressing destitution without a father, caring for her sibling(s) and her invalid mother, cooking for them, bathing them, getting them ready for school, and generally assuming a responsibility that far exceeds her years—she even hunts squirrel! Any of this sound familiar? Maybe I’m not the only one who was reminded of Katniss Everdeen, but what’s interesting is that both Everdeen and Ree Dolly, the protagonist of Winter’s Bone, are portrayed by the same actress in the film adaptations. So the question is, was I reminded of Everdeen because I thought first of Jennifer Lawrence? Or did I think of Everdeen because her character is legitimately similar to that of Dolly? I might never know, but I would expect the answer to also shed light on the elusive Ron Rash—Steve Holt conundrum.

Anyway, the character and situational similarities end there. Dolly has a sharp-shooting snark that Everdeen could only dream of.

“It don’t seem like you’ve got to try none, girl, smarty-mouth shit just flies out your yap anytime your yap falls open.”

In fact, it’s that smarty-mouth yap of hers that, while nearly getting her killed on occasion, is somehow related to her stubborn persistence that ensures her and her family’s survival over the long term—survival in spite of an extended family of drug runners who value their personal safety above kinship, and survival in the face of the unforgiving landscape of the frozen Ozarks. Put another way, Dolly’s little world makes District 12 seem like peaches and bubblegum. And yes, I realize that Everdeen has to duel to the death in an arena filled with poisonous jabberjays or whatever, but there is a strong sense of reality pervading Winter’s Bone that makes it far more bone chilling.

Speaking of bones, the imagery in this book is amazing: brittle bones of dead wildlife decaying on the cold ground, the cracking bones of one’s frozen fingers after exposure to the harsh winter air, rock hard bones from imagining Jennifer Lawrence with an archery bow. Ok, not that last one. But there are other bones here, real bones pertinent to the plot, bones the significance of which I cannot reveal.

For me, this could have been a five-star book. My only complaint is that it is actually too short. Besides all the excellent imagery, even the characters are amazing—especially the female ones—and the fact that their appearances in the novel are so brief just left me wanting more, more, more.

Winter in the Ozarks

↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑
(It is fucking cold.)

Oh, and by the way, this was my favorite film of 2010. What was at the time an excellent 5-star film I now see as an excellent 5-star film adaptation. ...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, confession-time, crime-and-mystery, hick-lit

Ree Dolly's father has jumped bail, leaving their home forfeit unless Ree can find him before his court date. Will she be able to find her father before she ends up homeless with her two brothers and insane mother?

First off, I have a confession to make. I live in rural Missouri and, therefore, some of the locations depicted in the story seem a lot like places I've driven through at a high rate of speed. Also, I've eaten squirrel on at least two occasions. Now, on to the meat of the review.

...more

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Nov 17, 2015 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

Gets so close to a fourth star it can smell the new paint job. In fact the plot is totally 5 star – the motivations and machinations of all the characters make complete sense and are a real heartbreaker. The main character, 16 year old Ree Dolly, is great. In the movie, which I came across all of 4 years ago, she’s played by none other than Jennifer Lawrence in her first big role, and the movie and Jennifer both knocked me flat on my back then. It’s a must see. If any book was filmed exactly ...more

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Oct 03, 2015 Mandy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Blood is thicker than water.

This book turned out way better than it started. I was going to rate it a 2 and then it turned around and picked up. A story of survival and family. A story about one girl's determination to find her father and clear her name so she could raise her brothers.

Not too shabby. A bit like Ma and Pa Kettle meets Deliverance if you catch my drift....

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Oct 11, 2012 Lawyer rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Lawyer by: October 2012 group read "On The Southern Literary Trail"

Shelves: crime, sacrifice, dark-fiction, southern-class-and-culture, family, love, sexuality, missouri, southern-literature, on-the-southern-literary-trail

Winter's Bone: Daniel Woodrell's Tale of When Blood is thicker than water

When I was a boy we had no Interstates. The car was not air-conditioned. A trip from Tuscaloosa to North Alabama was a twisting, turning drive through mountains and steep valleys as you drove into the northern part of the County. We traveled early to avoid the afternoon heat. The mists rose up from the valleys making the mountains look as though they grew out of clouds. My grandfather would comment on the smell of the ...more

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Feb 11, 2014 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, usa

Well, I'm an idiot (pretend this is news, please). I dismissed this book out of hand for years because I had a bunch of weird assumptions about it, none of which were based in anything even resembling reality, or the very encouraging reviews of it I actually did read several years ago. Even despite being told otherwise on multiple occasions, I sorta-thought 1) it was a Young Adult novel, 2) full of cheap emotional ploys, 3) like maybe a teen version of The Lovely Bones only because there's also Well, I'm an idiot (pretend this is news, please). I dismissed this book out of hand for years because I had a bunch of weird assumptions about it, none of which were based in anything even resembling reality, or the very encouraging reviews of it I actually did read several years ago. Even despite being told otherwise on multiple occasions, I sorta-thought 1) it was a Young Adult novel, 2) full of cheap emotional ploys, 3) like maybe a teen version of The Lovely Bones only because there's also a movie of it I've never seen, which has that Hunger Games (a YA novel...right?) girl in it, and 4) because the word "bone" in anything will never pass unnoticed by this teenage boy, but instead will make me lump totally unrelated things together in my head. The lovely boner, winter's boner. I'm not a terribly complex person. As for the YA assumption, I blame Jason for explicitly stating that was not the case, and in doing so, somehow planting the idea in the back of my stupid brain that it totally was the case. Apparently, I don't listen real good-like, which I also partially blame on the fact that with certain reviewers, I often don't even pay much attention to the title of the book they are reviewing, but just dive right into it because I enjoy their review-writing styles so much. Anyway, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been in a noir mood lately (and here is where I stop myself from squeeing some more about that tracking shot in episode four of True Detective and yelling at you for the zillionth time to watch that insanely wonderful show, but seriously: mercy, mercy me), and this book kept popping up as a rec, challenging all my wrongly-wired ideas about it. So I read it. And oh, boyeee.

Other people have described the vivid language better than I possibly could, so I won't bother. Much. À la McCarthy, this is a backwoods inferno so leanly yet effectively described that you can smell the blood and shit and rot, and gasp for a couple breaths of clean air in the rare moment where our leading lady is allowed the respite of mental retreat into daydreams, brief, shimmering visions which are themselves shadowed by dread given your knowledge that she is basically dangling just under half her weight over a pit of madness similar to the one fully embraced by her near-catatonic mother. And who wouldn't want to escape this hopeless, woe-filled existence, peopled as it is with impoverished psychopathic rednecks deadened by drugs and drink? A world where scrappiness is both absolutely essential, and will almost certainly get your teeth knocked out at some point. You simply can't win, unless you reality-check the shit out of your notions of victory.

I'm not even going to describe the plot, because it is deceptively simple, and this novel deserves more than some boring synopsis. The colorful dialect, the juxtapositions of mostly dark with sporadic, not quite mercifully light imagery, the way this book captures the vicious cycle of violence created and perpetuated by a world where criminality is seen as the only logical solution to poverty. All that. All right here. So good. Almost as good as True De...right, sorry. I shut up now. I grunt, grunt you should read. You read? You read. ...more

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Feb 08, 2012 B0nnie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Beautifully written, this is a simple story about survival, winter and bones. The main thing to survive is poverty - the kind where buttonless overcoats are de rigueur, and hunting and skinning squirrels is not done strictly for entertainment. It's in the Ozarks and winter is bone-cracking cold. We open the book to a hint of flurries, and venison hanging in trees to "sweeten that meat to the bone", and we meet Ree Dolly, our tough teen heroine.

The title "Winter's Bone" for me summoned a cold, ...more

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Apr 20, 2009 D. Pow rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Man, O Man, can this guy write. This is a very impressive novel. Here is language that soars, home-spun lyricisms, trailer-trash poetry, a book chock-full of crackhead sonnet riffs; Woodrell is a virtuoso of the first degree.

In Ree Dolly, the teenage protagonist he has conjured up, he has invented somebody you'll remember gladly until your dying days. Fiercely courageous with a keen eye for the moral effrontery foisted on her small shoulders by kin close and distant, she is feisty as a ...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Lobstergirl rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: trilobites

Shelves: fiction, to-be-burned

Horrendous, goopy, writers' workshop writing.

"Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned." (Are sentences required to make sense in "contemporary fiction?")

"Moans droned from her chest of bones. Shit leaked from her panties and she felt runnels of yuck on her thighs." Channeling Dr. Seuss and Cormac McCarthy simultaneously: ambitious!

"She thrust her head into the cold and broadcast the hot mush of old swallowed food toward the snowbanks." ...more

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Jul 15, 2013 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-fiction, girl-power, midwest, read-for-work

This novella is a gem. It's tough yet emotional, scary yet empowering, stark and yet beautiful.

I have been meaning to read Winter's Bone for several years, but I kept putting it off because I thought it would be depressing. And while the story is bleak, it is so gorgeously written that I got lost in the prose.

The book is set in an impoverished region in southern Missouri called the Ozarks, where making meth is a popular way of earning a living. But 17-year-old Ree Dolly hopes to escape to the This novella is a gem. It's tough yet emotional, scary yet empowering, stark and yet beautiful.

I have been meaning to read Winter's Bone for several years, but I kept putting it off because I thought it would be depressing. And while the story is bleak, it is so gorgeously written that I got lost in the prose.

The book is set in an impoverished region in southern Missouri called the Ozarks, where making meth is a popular way of earning a living. But 17-year-old Ree Dolly hopes to escape to the Army next year, if she can track down her Daddy. He's out on bond and has been gone for a while, and if she doesn't find him, she'll lose the family home.

Poor Ree. She's just a teenager, yet she has to make all of the adult decisions because her mother has gone crazy and her daddy skipped out. She's even taking care of her two younger brothers, teaching them how to cook, how to fight, and how to shoot.

Although friends advise her against it, Ree starts asking around to see if anyone can find her father. The more she asks, the more danger she finds. This is one of those stories where a happy ending seems impossible.

The movie version of this book with Jennifer Lawrence is well done, but I thought the book was much richer in detail and description. I highly recommend it.

Favorite Descriptions
"Mom sat in her chair beside the potbelly and the boys sat at the table eating what Ree fed them. Mom's morning pills turned her into a cat, a breathing thing that sat near heat and occasionally made a sound. Mom's chair was an old padded rocker that seldom rocked, and at odd instants she'd hum ill-matched snips of music, notes unrelated by melody or pitch. But for most of any day she was quiet and still, wearing a small lingering smile prompted by something vaguely nice going on inside her head. She was a Bromont, born to this house, and she'd once been pretty. Even as she was now, medicated and lost to the present, with hair she forgot to wash or brush and deep wrinkles growing on her face, you could see she'd once been as comely as any girl that ever danced barefoot across this tangled country of Ozark hills and hollers. Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go."

"Ree's grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean. So many Dolly kids were that way, ruined before they had chin hair, groomed to live outside square law and abide by the remorseless blood-soaked commandments that governed lives led outside square law."
...more

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May 05, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Ok, I read Winter's Bone on D and Karen's recommendations, so I’m posting links to their reviews before I start:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

and

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Winter’s Bone is a hell of a book in that A) the novel is fantastic, and B) it's set in an American version of hell. The story of Ree, a teenage girl charged with finding her bail-jumping father in order to save her family’s house, catches fire early and never cools down. Ree lives in a terrifying Ok, I read Winter's Bone on D and Karen's recommendations, so I’m posting links to their reviews before I start:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

and

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Winter’s Bone is a hell of a book in that A) the novel is fantastic, and B) it's set in an American version of hell. The story of Ree, a teenage girl charged with finding her bail-jumping father in order to save her family’s house, catches fire early and never cools down. Ree lives in a terrifying section of the Ozarks that takes on the character of a mythical underworld with its own set of unwritten codes and rules, of which the two most important are “don’t snitch” and “don’t steal”. This book made me want to never drive through the Ozarks again. Seriously. What if your car broke down? The characters in Winter’s Bone made the guys from Deliverance look like pussies. Ree must traverse this hellish landscape of tenacious loyalties and inbred family ties with the help of her baby-bound former best friend and a mutilated uncle flying on crank. Good luck with that, eh?

By the way, I’m not exaggerating when I describe this book as “mythical”. Three grim, violent sisters reminded me of the fates and furies. Other characters were monstrous sociopaths. Ree’s gripping journey has an epic quality; she’ll cross hell to preserve her brothers’ redemption and reclaim hope and dignity. Woodrell’s brilliant phrasing captures the dread winter in the kind of place where everyone knows each other and there’s no comfortable way to reconcile the idea that you share a country with the natives. He catches details that color in the lines of despair and unspoken unease. Ree’s resolve is all the more paradoxically human and superhuman for the surroundings.

This book checks in at less than 200 pages but feels complete and more than satisfying. Goddamn, I loved Winter’s Bone. Now I want to see the movie. I hope they don’t fuck it up. Mr. Woodrell’s sparse, muscular prose deserves all the praise and awards around its neck and a solid movie to match.

(Thanks, D. and Karen!)

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Jul 05, 2011 TK421 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

A few authors over the course of the past few years have recently stood out above the normal, literary crowd—for me, anyways. And the thing I noticed about these authors is that they all seem to write darker fiction. If I had to say, a good representation of these authors is: Roberto Bolano, Cormac McCarthy, Castle Freeman, Jr., and now, Daniel Woodrell.

These authors make up a class of writers that I have termed Brutal Poets. Their use of language invokes a visceral response from the reader, A few authors over the course of the past few years have recently stood out above the normal, literary crowd—for me, anyways. And the thing I noticed about these authors is that they all seem to write darker fiction. If I had to say, a good representation of these authors is: Roberto Bolano, Cormac McCarthy, Castle Freeman, Jr., and now, Daniel Woodrell.

These authors make up a class of writers that I have termed Brutal Poets. Their use of language invokes a visceral response from the reader, sounds sometimes biblical or archaic, but never forced. The way they describe a landscape that mimics the inner feelings of characters is alarming and disorientating because of its precision and perfection. Basically, these authors seem to really know what it is that they are writing about.

Woodrell, a previous unknown to me before I saw the adaptation of his novel on DVD, is a master storyteller. Terse and sparse, his novel WINTER’S BONE is a punishing reward of a read. The story takes place over a few days in the Ozarks, Appalachia country. Ree Dolly needs to find Jessup, her daddy. He’s skipped out on court, and has put his house and acreage up for collateral for his bond. The problem is something isn’t right. He’s gone missing. And Ree begins to understand more about where she lives exactly, and who the people really are that populate her family and community. Characters like Thump and Uncle Teardrop and even Ree’s Mom add a depth to this story that brings it past a “missing-person” story or a “murder mystery.”

From the moment Ree takes it upon herself to find out the truth about her father, to the moment she has the emotional revelation at the end of the story with Uncle Teardrop, this bleak novel will keep you mesmerized, wanting to turn pages as fast as you can until you have reached the staggering and horrifying conclusion.

Don’t do this. Don’t ruin such a great experience by consuming it whole. Nibble at the book. Let your mind digest it. Savor it. Like a death row inmate being given their last meal, taste every juicy word on every page. Drink up every image and scene. There are plenty of other books out there to scarf down as fast as you can. Not this one.

Warning: be prepared. Oftentimes there are bleak moments like when Ree is beaten by the Milton sisters, and presented in a barn to Thump. When Ree comes to, she and a girl named Megan exchange these words:

Megan squatted, patted Ree’s face, and said, “Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?”

“Kill me, I guess.”

“That idea has been said already. Got’ny other ones?”

“Help me. Ain’t nobody said that idea yet, have they?”

This scene still makes my flesh get goose bumps.

(VERY HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION)
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Jan 20, 2014 Anthony Vacca rated it really liked it

Shelves: southern-fiction, 2014

For the most part, I am perfectly content to read books littered with despicable exemplars of our wonderful species. Give me your moral degenerates, your psychopathic wives, your misogynistic husbands, your bloodthirsty children, your lechers, repeat killers, serial adulterers, conmen, thieves, necrophiliacs, Christians—give me every last bit of your human refuge because I will gladly read about them over honest, good, hardworking men and women any day of the week. Why? Because good people are For the most part, I am perfectly content to read books littered with despicable exemplars of our wonderful species. Give me your moral degenerates, your psychopathic wives, your misogynistic husbands, your bloodthirsty children, your lechers, repeat killers, serial adulterers, conmen, thieves, necrophiliacs, Christians—give me every last bit of your human refuge because I will gladly read about them over honest, good, hardworking men and women any day of the week. Why? Because good people are boring outside of the real world.

So it was a bit of a surprise to get knocked arse over teakettle off my high horse of arch cynicism by this mean, gaunt and big-hearted novel by Daniel Woodrell, the esteemed bard of anti-bucolicism in the Ozarks.

Winter’s Bone relates the story of 16-year old Ree Dolly and her quest to find her missing father—an all-around fuck-up who is good for one thing, and that is making meth—before he misses his court date and the gov’ment takes possession of the family’s house and land, which good ole dad was kind enough to put up so he could make bail and then split. Add a nearly catatonic mom and two younger brothers who completely rely on their older sis for survival, and you’d be kind of a cold bitch or bastard to not feel something for Ree. But what really got under my skin was seeing how obviously foiled Ree’s life and dreams already are at the age most of us think we got this whole life situation on lockdown. Woodrell brings to life the hollers and frozen wastelands of the novel’s setting, packed with their hundreds upon hundreds of kissing cousins that have been loafing about since for God knows how many generations now. Ree lives in a patriarchal shithole of a society that champions lifelessness, despair, violence, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse over education, happiness, and self-worth. And a poor economy is only somewhat to blame for these factors.

But Woodrell’s novel functions as more than just a condemnation of American backwoods life and the banal cruelty humans enact upon one another; it also offers something resembling hope to the reader, even if it is the meager chance that humans may actually be capable of caring about other people. And let the record show that Ree is a heroine to marvel over as you root for her to somehow come out on top by the end of this sparse, hauntingly-written Gothic yarn.
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May 22, 2011 James Thane rated it really liked it

Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly lives for the day when she will be old enough to join the Army and escape the grinding economic and intellectual poverty of her life in the Missouri Ozarks where her extended family lives by a variety of illegal pursuits, mostly involving the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamines and crank cocaine. But Ree's dreams are shattered when her father, a celebrated meth chef, disappears, leaving Ree nearly penniless and responsible for her two younger brothers and ...more

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Nov 07, 2017 Miranda Reads rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook

I did the unforgivable.

I saw the movie prior to reading the book.

I know, the shame.

The admirable strength of Ree held together not only her family but also this book.

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

It might be Jennifer Lawrence, but Ree does remind me of a harder, prouder Katnis.

Ree's father posted bail and ran off, leaving her to tend her young brothers and her disconnected mother. The house is in danger and the food is nearly out yet her back is stiff, her jaw is square. She ...more

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Aug 29, 2011 Trudi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: made-into-movie, crime-mystery, modern-lit, audiobook, good-country-people, awesome-audio, 2012, my-desert-island, all-in-the-family, pass-the-kleenex

I've put off writing a review for this book because I always struggle with the great ones and Woodrell's Winter's Bone is one of those (with a capital G). It's craft and heart and drama and beauty. It's poetry and grit, entangled in an embrace of love and hatred.

Woodrell offers up a stinging portrait of impoverished life in the Ozarks, where kin saves as often as it condemns. The hill people of Ree's world live by their own laws separate from that of the state -- of paramount importance, don't I've put off writing a review for this book because I always struggle with the great ones and Woodrell's Winter's Bone is one of those (with a capital G). It's craft and heart and drama and beauty. It's poetry and grit, entangled in an embrace of love and hatred.

Woodrell offers up a stinging portrait of impoverished life in the Ozarks, where kin saves as often as it condemns. The hill people of Ree's world live by their own laws separate from that of the state -- of paramount importance, don't be a snitch and mind your own business. Bad things happen to anyone who talks too much or asks too many questions. Unfortunately, sixteen year old Ree has a lot of questions that need answering with only her to ask them. Left on her own to protect a shattered mother and two helpless kid brothers, Ree is desperate to uncover the whereabouts of her meth-making father. She must venture into the cold and ice and pass over hostile thresholds where she is neither invited nor wanted.

Ree’s fierceness and courage stole my heart. She ranks as one of my favorite literary characters OF ALL TIME. Her stubbornness and smart mouth made me smile as much as it made me fear for her safety. Ree has her own set of rules to live by that include, stepping in to do for her brothers where her parents have failed and “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.” Ree is an old soul, mature beyond her years, forced to grow up fast and smart in a world that has teeth and a taste for blood.

This is a harsh story, one where the author pulls no punches. Woodrell is not out to romanticize this hill life or the hardscrabble characters living it. He wants us to see the ugly, to feel it in our bones, but for all of that there is tremendous beauty here as well, not just in the prose that SINGS but in the simplicity of a proud people who do what they must to survive in an environment that does not forgive weakness or stupidity lightly.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I am also going to recommend Kemper’s review here, because he does such a wonderful job capturing the book’s honesty and intensity. If I haven’t convinced you to read Winter’s Bone, he will.

***A note on the audio version: Outstanding! Emma Galvin captures Ree’s strength and vulnerability perfectly. Woodrell’s prose is so gorgeous it soars when read aloud.

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist. `Winter's Bone

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Nov 03, 2014 LeAnne: GeezerMom rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, litmus-test

Icy, dark, beautiful, and brutal. Ive rarely hurt for and hoped for a character as much as I did Ree. Sweet Pea, for all time.

The main character here is written as tough and tender and backed into a hard place, and it is terrific to see a strong female protagonist in a work of Southern grit lit. Ree is a bright teen living in poverty but who sees a sensible way out of the awful lifestyle that her parents have accepted.

As her plans start to gel, a family emergency pops up, and there are no ...more

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Dec 13, 2018 Char rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, addiction, wickedly-disturbing, audio-book, dark-fiction, small-town-life, wtfuckery, mental-illness, abuse, hillbillies

I'm not feeling like a full review today so I'll limit this to only a few comments.

*The Ozarks in which this book takes place seem to have nothing in common with the OZARK Netflix show.

*I have no doubt in my mind that life in some areas of the Ozarks is as brutal as it's depicted in this book. Poverty, drug use, tight family units, and long-held multi-generational grudges are just part of the miserable lives examined here.

*I couldn't help but feel for 16 year old Ree who just wanted to join ...more

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Jul 28, 2008 Annet rated it really liked it

Shelves: wilderness-books-can-usa, family-ties

Great story, characterful, fits in with my favorite authors Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx. I loved Ree! Hear a movie is made of this book, glad I read the book first!

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Jan 03, 2017 Puck rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of Annie Proulx ("Brokeback Mountain")

Shelves: underrated, adult, mystery-thriller

A perfect, ice-cold winter read that burns like frostbite, but in a pleasant way.

In this thriller set in the harsh Ozark Mountains, 17-year-old Ree Dolly is determined to find her father. Deadbeat dad and meth-cooker Jessup Dolly didn’t show up for court, and since he put up their house for collateral with the bailbondsmen, chances are high that the family gets kicked out by the end of the month.
Bearing responsibility for her two younger brothers and her mentally unstable mother, Ree starts A perfect, ice-cold winter read that burns like frostbite, but in a pleasant way.

In this thriller set in the harsh Ozark Mountains, 17-year-old Ree Dolly is determined to find her father. Deadbeat dad and meth-cooker Jessup Dolly didn’t show up for court, and since he put up their house for collateral with the bailbondsmen, chances are high that the family gets kicked out by the end of the month.
Bearing responsibility for her two younger brothers and her mentally unstable mother, Ree starts asking questions – expect people in Ozark hate questions. Everyone living in the poor mountain community, from friends to (distant) family members, tell her to shut up and don’t cause trouble, but Ree can’t listen: she just has too much to lose.

“Jessup never would smack you. I don’t know why, why he never would, but I always have said someday somebody’s goin’ to pay a price for him not whompin’ you good when you needed it.”
“I wasn’t tryin’ to be a smart mouth, there, Teardrop. Uncle Teardrop.”
“It don’t seem like you’ve got to try none, girl, smarty-mouth shit just flies out your yap anytime your yap falls open.”

Ree is an incredible heroine. She’s a prime example of a tough female character: brave, independent, resourceful, smart, but not afraid to be kind and tender to her loved-ones. “She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her”, but in the moments where Ree is together with her brothers or her best friend Gail, you see her hidden soft side and warm heart.

However, due to what life has given her, she had to grow grim and cold; it’s all a matter of survival. Ree is a young woman – a teenager, still - carrying a heavy load while living in a harsh, cruel, and unforgiving world without any laws or people to help her. “You should never ask for what ought to be offered”, but not even family bonds guarantee support when you’re living in Ozark and decide to get into other people’s business.
Ree’s uncle Teardrop is a great illustration of these peculiar (family) dynamics between people: the man himself has half of his face melted off, he’s a crystal meth addict and he is basically a very dangerous person. Ree is terrified of him (and she should be), but later on you learn how he cares for her, in his own strange way.

So this book isn’t a cheerful read. It’s bleak and grim and although you’ll love Ree’s unbending spirit, your heart will break for the price she has to pay to discover the truth about her missing father.
The story is therefore pretty scary and emotional and can sometimes feel quite hopeless, but reading Ree’s conversations with her brothers, Gail, or her uncle will give your strength. Ree is on her own but not alone, and even though the ending of the book isn’t happy, you get the feeling Ree will be okay.

I take one star off because sometimes the descriptions of the winter landscape were a little too wordy and the pace getting too slow around 60% of the book, but overall this is an incredible read to start 2017 with, so 4 stars.

PS. In 2010 “Winter’s Bone” was made into a movie with the same name, and the book-to-movie-adaptation is, in my opinion, very well done. The movie stays loyal to the plot, the atmosphere and the setting are perfect, and the portrayal of Ree Dolly by a very young Jennifer Lawrence is fantastic. If you like this book, you’ll definitely like the movie too. ...more

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Sep 08, 2017 Beverly rated it really liked it

Scrappy, tough Ozark mt. girl endures brutality and deprivation to take care of her family.

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Sep 29, 2011 Terry rated it liked it

Shelves: southern-literary-trail, crime

3 – 3.5 stars

I think I may have come to this book with excessive expectations given the consistently high ratings and voluminous praise in GR friends’ reviews. That’s not to say that this was a bad book, or that I didn’t enjoy it, but for me this book didn’t hit the sweet spot that it seemed to reach for most others.

Ree Dolly is a tough-as-nails adolescent living a hand-to-mouth existence in perhaps the worst possible conditions in the backwoods of the Ozarks, forced to care for her two younger 3 – 3.5 stars

I think I may have come to this book with excessive expectations given the consistently high ratings and voluminous praise in GR friends’ reviews. That’s not to say that this was a bad book, or that I didn’t enjoy it, but for me this book didn’t hit the sweet spot that it seemed to reach for most others.

Ree Dolly is a tough-as-nails adolescent living a hand-to-mouth existence in perhaps the worst possible conditions in the backwoods of the Ozarks, forced to care for her two younger brothers and mentally ill mother. Her father, a meth cook who’s gone missing and who has put up their house as part of his bond, provides the impetus for the plot and propels Ree into a world of suspicious kin, underworld honour, and ever-present danger. She’s got gumption, this girl, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if I’d say she “kicks ass” the way most reviewers do. I’d say she knows how to take a licking and keep on ticking. She’s also headstrong as a bull and won’t let anything, or anyone, stand in her way, no matter how intimidating. There’s a lot to love about Ree: her undying love for her family and fierce devotion to them regardless of her dreams to escape from what she knows is a dead-end life; her refusal to let others tell her when she needs to give up and let ‘what has to be’ shut her down; her willingness to make any personal sacrifice when it will better the case of others in her life. Other characters are also vividly drawn even if they only appear briefly in the story: Uncle Teardrop springs to mind, a man who is both exactly what he seems and something more; Sherriff Baskin, a lawman who straddles the uncomfortable line between the official and criminal worlds that seems to be endemic of places like the Ozark backwoods of tightly-knit outlaw families; the vicious loyalty and twisted sense of honour of Merab Milton and her sisters; the playful, but tragic innocence of Ree’s brothers Sonny and Harold.

Still, all that said I found myself not really finding myself fully pulled into the story until the final third of the book. Prior to that there’s a lot of wandering amongst the backwoods and remembering of times past mingled with fears of times to come as Ree searches for her father, but it’s not until things start coming to a head that I really found myself compelled by the story. Add to that Woodrell’s over-wrought prose and things stayed at a ‘good but not great’ level for the most part for me. I mean, I’m as much of a fan of poetic prose as the next guy (probably even more so given who the next guy is likely to be), but I still winced at a fair number of Woodrell’s metaphors, and his overblown (and sometimes confusing) descriptions of nature sort of reminded me of some of the Romantics at their most over-heated and excessive. Woodrell is by no means a bad writer, but I do think his prose would have benefitted by being turned down a notch or two from time to time, if only to let those high-flown metaphors that did work shine all the more.

Still, a very good read. Hick-lit noir that generally delivers on its promise.
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Around the Year i...: Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell	1	11	Dec 26, 2017 03:39PM
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About Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell

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Growing up in Missouri, seventy miles downriver from Hannibal, Mark Twain was handed to me early on, first or second grade, and captivated me for years, and forever, I reckon. Robert Louis Stevenson had his seasons with me just before my teens and I love him yet. There are too many others to mention, I suppose, but feel compelled to bring up Hemingway, James Agee, Flannery O'Connor, John McGahern, ...more