Review by New York Times Review
at the outset of Chris Offutt's new novel, "Country Dark," a young veteran of the Korean War crosses from Ohio into Kentucky, and it's not long before he's facing down a gun. A wary, fierce country kid who doesn't care for towns with "too many people doing too many things at once, and everything boring in its repetition and noise," Tticker is built for trouble. As the coot giving him a lift draws down on him, Tticker turns his body to make a smaller target of his vital organs. The old derelict orders Tticker to take a drink of corn liquor from the glove box. You wonder where this goes and how fast. If you're familiar with Offutt's fiction or can simply hazard a guess at the import of the title "Country Dark," you get a grim idea. But after Tticker drinks, the man hands over the pistol. The derelict is just a lonely lush avoiding his old lady, and now he wants Tticker to make him throw one back. To this old sot, the gun represents some kind of high hilarity. That is, until Tticker aims it at the man's head and calmly splits for the woods with both moonshine and pistol. Soon Tticker is under the "unfathomable depth" of a cloudy night. "It was country dark. He closed his eyes feeling safe." He's back home in one of the two Kentuckys - "east and west, dirt and blacktop" - and you can guess which. The one populated by pale people who live shortened days in the hollers, where the air and forest are thick and heavy. Where the very first person you meet is the same midwife who will greet your siblings, your cousins and eventually your children. It is an old world, older than the 1954 in which the story begins. It's a darker world too, but darkness is cover. Raised in this hard country, Tticker is almost unfairly prepared for war: "He shot quicker. In hand-to-hand combat, he struck first." When he hastens back with that pistol and booze, Tticker is like an animal back in his lair. Tticker cooks a squirrel and wood sorrel roots with henbit and dandelion. He sleeps. He eats a rattlesnake. He swims in a pool. Eastern Kentucky is a kind of Eden - for a minute. Of course, the most dangerous thing in the woods is always other people, and soon Tticker is observing a woman running from a car on a dirt road. Then he is observing the driver attempting to rape her. Then Tticker isn't observing anymore. What ensues is a lot like the unexpected turn in the pickup, a beguiling hallmark of Offutt's storytelling. Tticker subdues the man with a rock, saving his bullets for squirrels. We learn the man is her uncle. We learn the man is the sheriff. The girl, Rhonda, doesn't want him killed on account of her conscience. Tticker can't have the man coming after him, nor can he kill him. He conjures a solution out of threats and cash. Offutt's magic is that all of Tticker's entanglements are dealt with in a manner so roundly humane you feel bathed in light, not plunged in the dark. Dazzled by this courageous man from the woods, Rhonda falls for Tticker, wondering already if their children will have his mismatched eyes. Tticker, for his part, can't look at her because she's so pretty. "Her cheekbones were as prominent as railroad gravel. She was as small a woman as he'd ever seen." He already feels the weight of his love, the sheer responsibility of it, and now he has "to think like an officer and issue orders to himself." Soldiering was but a preparation for the troubles the world has in store. After the first section in 1954, the story leaps 10 years ahead. Tticker and Rhonda have five kids. Tticker's mismatched eyes aren't passed down, but something bad keeps going wrong in Rhonda's womb. The kids are born severely handicapped, bedridden. Rhonda and Tticker have been examined, but no cause is found. Only little Jo is normal and healthy, but she spends much of her time helping her overworked mother, who bears a biblical load: "She loved the babies with every cell of her being but it always felt one-sided. They were too bad off to love her back." Social services are involved. They tell Rhonda to cease relations with her husband, that the state will care for the burdensome children. Rhonda is outraged. Tticker, who runs bootleg liquor to parts north, promptly takes steps to defend his family. You oughtn't know much more heading in. The story rollicks from 1964 to 1971, careening downhill. There is a fantastic climax, a satisfying resolution. And "Country Dark" is audacious without seeming so at all. Routinely shifting points of view, Offutt accesses feelings and tones within tense and complicated moments with playful alacrity. After transacting some nasty business in the book's late going, Tticker realizes, "War and prison had taught him that sides didn't really exist, that everyone was eventually caught in the middle of something." Novels can teach the same thing. We see all the sides. We are caught. There is a saying that the Lord doesn't give folks more than they can handle, which is another way of saying people get what they deserve. However you put it, it's a Puritan lie. Outside your door are people heaped with more than anyone could handle. We'd do well to remember we are all caught in something eventually. "He could stay here until he died of thirst," flicker thinks in the face of more than he can handle. "He could shoot himself in the head. He could climb higher on the hill and leap off the tunnel cut and land on the railroad track. No, no and no. Beanpole owed him ten thousand dollars." Books like this tell the truth. You'd rather die than bear the unfair burden. It's a bloody fight getting what you deserve. "Country Dark" is dark, but deeply humane. The love in this book is deep and powerful. And winsome twinkles shine through the blackness throughout, thanks in no small part to Offutt's keen ear and eye. The coffee remains "strong enough to float a rock." An old boy is commended for still being on his "hind legs." Beanpole is fat with "table muscle" and flicker remains "either-handed as a spider." "either-handed" is an apt description of Offutt as well. His creative urges have found expression in memoir, short stories, comic books, essays and television. From his first collection of short stories, "Kentucky Straight," to now, the quality always astonishes. His previous book, "My Father, the Pornographer," found him reckoning with his dad's career as an author of dark erotica and the man's impact as a paternal and creative force on his son. I came away from that book with little wonder that Offutt's own output is so catholic. And yet it is surprising to realize that this is only Offutt's second novel. His first, "The Good Brother" (1997), was so powerful that more seemed destined to come. Thankfully, his either-handed efforts still include novels of mythic power. This is the Chris Offutt book I've been waiting for - an achievement of spellbinding momentum and steadfast heart. ? Tucker cooks a squirrel and wood sorrel roots. He sleeps. He eats a rattlesnake. smith henderson is the author of the novel "Fourth of July Creek."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 16, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
It's been nearly 20 years since Offutt's Out of the Woods (1999), and his return to fiction will be celebrated by all readers of country noir. Tucker is a Korean War vet traveling home to rural Kentucky when he happens upon a young woman, Rhonda, being assaulted by an older man. He comes to her aid, and the two steal the man's car and embark on what will be a storm-tossed life (Trouble came their way like sideways wind in winter) punctuated by powerful love and bursts of violence, always necessitated by threats to the separate peace Tucker struggles to maintain for Rhonda and their growing family, which includes several severely disabled children. Tucker's options in remote Kentucky are limited, but he falls into work as a bootlegger, until he's forced to take the rap for a moonshiner. When he returns from jail, Tucker finds Rhonda and the children imperiled on multiple fronts and must again protect his loved ones with the only tools he knows. Tucker is a true existential hero, facing his circumscribed world directly and acting with unflinching determination. His story, like the work of Daniel Woodrell, is both heartrendingly painful and unsentimentally uplifting.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Offutt's exceptional new novel (following his memoir My Father, the Pornographer) brings to light with gritty, heartfelt precision what one character, a social worker, calls the "two Kentuckys, east and west, dirt and blacktop." The book follows Tucker, Kentucky-born and -raised, as he returns home in 1954, a teenager fresh out of the Korean War. On his way, Tucker saves a 14-year-old girl, Rhonda, from being raped by her uncle. Tucker and Rhonda soon marry and set up house in his family's old cabin while Tucker finds work running moonshine across state lines. A decade later, Rhonda has had two miscarriages, as well as given birth to a hydrocephalic boy who wasn't expected to survive infancy, two baby girls who lie listless in some mysterious sedation, and one healthy girl named Jo. While Rhonda and Tucker hope God has a plan, "Rhonda couldn't see what this plan was other than a punishment. She loved the babies... but they were too bad off to love her back." This hard living drives the narrative, each heartbreak matched only by Tucker's steadfast determination to do right by his family. Offutt's prose cuts deep and sharp, but Tucker and Rhonda remain somewhat mechanical, despite the nuance of the language used to describe them. The novel, however, is an undeniable testament to the importance and clarity of Offutt's voice in contemporary American literature. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The talented Offutt here returns to rural Kentucky, the territory defining his fiction and memoirs. In 1954, 17-year-old Tucker arrives home from Korea with 11 medals, $400 in army pay, and 15-year-old Rhonda, who is about to become his wife. While other men head for Ohio factory jobs, Tucker stays in his beloved Kentucky hills and delivers moonshine for the local runner Beanpole. Over the next ten years, Tucker and Rhonda have six children, four severely disabled, and the devoted Tucker works the dangerous but well-paid job to provide for them. When an officious social worker threatens to institutionalize their children, Tucker metes out his own justice, an act of violence that Beanpole holds over him to force him to take the fall in a fake raid. If Tucker goes to prison for eight months, Beanpole will pay Rhonda's bills and give Tucker a big bonus. Once Tucker is imprisoned, however, a gang fight sends Tucker to maximum security for five more years. When released, he heads home to settle a few scores. VERDICT In Offutt's first work of fiction since 1997's The Good Brother, the award-winning author delivers a rich, compelling story of hardscrabble Kentucky mountain life while showing deep empathy for his careworn characters. [See Prepub Alert, 10/16/17.]-Donna -Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The title hints at the tone, for this is indeed a Southern gothic story, set in Kentucky and focused on a man who would do anything to keep his family together.Offutt's (My Father, the Pornographer, 2015, etc.) first fiction in almost two decades opens in 1954, when Tucker is coming back from the Korean War with 11 medalsand he's not even 18. On the way home through rural Kentucky he stops a man from raping Rhonda, a 14-year-old girl, and he finds the potential rapist is not only the girl's uncle, but also the deputy sheriff. Rhonda and her rescuer rather casually decide to marry, and Tucker makes a living making moonshine runs for Beanpole, an unfathomably corrupt, 350-pound colossus. The narrative then shifts to 1964, when Tucker and Rhonda have five children the state is threatening to remove from their home. It turns out that of the five, only Jo is "right," the others having varying degrees of physical or emotional disability. But disabilities or not, Tucker and Rhonda love them all and don't want the family separated. Blind with rage, Tucker hunts down and kills the social worker who was most adamant about taking his children. Using his connections, Beanpole gets Tucker a reduced sentence, but prison ultimately becomes a place where "Tucker retreated further into himself while increasing his vigilance" against fellow prisoners out to get him. The final part of the novel takes place when Tucker is released in 1971. He feels Beanpole cheated him when he was incarcerated, and now he's looking for revenge. Offutt has a fine ear for Kentucky-speak and is able to make small shifts in vocabulary that capture the rhythms of rural conversation ("Hidy....Come on up and set a spell"). And Tucker is a knotty and complex characterwarm and loving toward his family but cold and threatening toward almost everyone else.A compelling and brooding read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
