D.H. Schleicher's Reviews > Provinces of Night

Provinces of Night is an American Gothic masterpiece.

I read this in the stinking heat of summer, and there is sprawling 10 page description of an ice storm near the novel's end that is so vivid I started to shiver and had to pull the covers up while reading it in bed.

Earlier in the novel, in the summer nights, teenagers falling in love watch a swarm of fireflies gather over a river and Gay treats us to this haunting decription: "There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn't put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway. The way they'd seemed not separate entities, but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dominion over the provinces of night."

Later, the boy's object of affection muses on his infamous grandfather's eerie banjo songs: "He's strange. Strange but good. It leaves you feeling like you heard something important but can't quite figure out what it was."

Gay's writing is just loaded with stuff like this...strange but good...important...fragile...transient.

I loved every bit of it.