I can't say enough good things about this author or this novel. I'm a huge fan of Mr. Joy and his writing. He holds back nothing unless necessary and has a style I would consider devil-may-care.

The story of two mountain boys, directionless with unrealized ambitions and their journey of tragedy after only wanting to score some meth, is a wild ride if there ever was one. The setting is perfect, a land that has yet to be gentrified, but barely escaping the loss of its heritage. It's a true display of how drugs are killing the more rural areas, while out-of-towners are making it harder every day to make a living in Appalachia, taking away affordable homes and land and displacing working people into poverty more and more.

The war veteran is a sad and tragic fellow you want to hate, but pity throughout, knowing he wasn't the same man who left. His friend was just trying to keep it together, more for his friend than himself. While there are zero warm fuzzies, there are lessons to be learned throughout.

Short Summary: Aiden McCall and Thad Broom have been best friends since they were children, both trapped by the imaginary confines of their hometown even after a huge amount of money ends up in their possession after witnessing the violent death of their drug dealer.

Thoughts: Joy’s graceful prose is all the more evident when its backdrop is a brutal tale but the two pair perfectly by focusing on the powerful loyalty between two lifelong friends.

Verdict: There’s no sophomore slump to be had here; The Weight of This World is just as fantastic as Where All Light Tends to Go which makes the wait for The Line That Held Us all the more interminable.

I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I truly enjoyed this book although it definitely left me with strange feelings at times. The characters were wonderful but so different from people I encounter in real life....but this is good! I like books that make me think outside my comfort zone. The author is a great storyteller and the book is wonderfully written.

3.9 - dark story of two troubled young men and their unlucky community; very well-written, with characters that inspired feeling

This novel portrays poverty, PTSD, and drug abuse in an incredibly real, painful way. If you're looking for a fictional look into the world of "white trash," check this one out. Be warned, though, there are several graphic descriptions of violence.

Talented storyteller, David Joy returns following his outstanding debut, Where All the Light Tends to Go to rural North Carolina mountains of Appalachia with another dark, gritty Southern noir THE WEIGHT OF THIS WORLD. From flawed and tortured souls, in search of light within the darkness.

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

In Sylva, NC Aiden McCall, at the young age of twelve, witnessed his dad murder his mother, then turn the gun on himself. A sight which would haunt him for the rest of his life. His worst fear was becoming his father one day.

Growing up in a group home he only had one friend, Thad Broom. Thad had his own past. Aiden had always believed that as time moved on the world would open up, that life would get easier rather than harder.

Hard led to harder. Life had a way of wearing a man down into nothing. The older he got the more complicated the world had become.

With enough money and a fresh start, Aiden and Thad could set things right. However, the housing bubble burst and jobs dried up. Thad was on deployment in Afghanistan when the construction business went to pot.

Those years Thad got to leave Aiden was jealous. But when Thad came back, Aiden was not sure who had it better or worse. If they could only leave the mountains. Aiden thought somewhere like Asheville, Hendersonville, or Atlanta for a fresh start. An opportunity for a better life.

April Trantham, Thad’s mother, had her own problems and past, starting from a young age. When the boys were in high school April inherited six acres and an old run down house and a single wide from the old man George had cancer.

April and Aiden find comfort in one another while Thad is away. Thad returns after a traumatic tour of duty in Afghanistan he is never the same, more damaged than when he left. The three of them want to escape their traumas; however, the weight of the world is heavy around them, and they cannot seem to escape.

. . . “There were so many horrible things they had buried inside themselves, all of the memories that had come to govern their lives. He found himself wishing that he could have been the one to bear it all. He wished that he could have taken all of the bad in this world and piled it onto himself so that he would have been the one to ever know that kind of suffering.”


From drugs, hatred, murder, crime and violence. Thad and Aiden’s drug dealer accidentally kills himself, leaving the two young men with drugs and cash; however, they cannot seem to pull themselves from the darkness. A drug- deal gone, bad.

. . . “Things weren’t okay. Everything wasn’t going to be all right. The world was entirely broken,”

Thad soon realizes that dying was a one-way ticket to judgment and it made no difference whether it came now or years down the road. He would be judged on his way to find redemption.

A mother who had not fully given herself to motherhood and her son, due to her own demons of pain and her innocence stolen. Aiden, trying to forget his haunted past. Did some people deserve to die? People had choices. These three may have more in common than they know.

As in his first book, David Joy skillfully balances the all-consuming brutality and darkness of his characters with the lyrical beauty of his writing. He captures the emotions, the setting, the culture; from crimes, dysfunction, hatred and poison, and struggles of the wounded human spirit, often with limited choices and repeating their own environment.

Told with compassion, from sadness to hope. Fans of gritty Southern noirs/literature and authors Ron Rash, Wiley Cash and John Hart will appreciate this skillfully written tale.

A special thank you to Penguin Putman and NetGalley for an early reading copy. (Also purchased audiobook)

JDCMustReadBooks

David Joy's books are always meant to be read, pondered, and listened to. MacLeod Andrews is a perfect narrator for THE WEIGHT OF THIS WORLD, as he was for Where All Light Tends to Go. Both 5 Stars.

David Joy's debut novel, WHERE ALL LIGHT TENDS TO GO, was one of my favorite crime novels from 2015. With THE WEIGHT OF THIS WORLD Joy has solidified his place as a master of Appalachian Noir. His writing is at turns poetic, brutal, and illuminating, very reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell and Ron Rash. Joy is able to take a seemingly simple story--in this case chronicling the lives of a combat veteran just returned from war, his mother, and the friend that connects them all--and spin it on its head in unexpected ways. You can bet in a Joy novel that the characters will tug at your heartstrings, cause you to shout out in frustration, and wince as you see them headed full speed toward a brick wall with no protective gear in place. Joy is quickly becoming a favorite.

Set in Jackson County, North Carolina, this book is about childhood friends Thad and Aiden and Thad's mother April. Aiden was orphaned by an act of murder/suicide when he was very young. Thad, while not technically an orphan, never had the love of a family. I've grown a little tired of grit lit, which tends to be cliche-ridden, but I really liked this book. Yes, there were guns and meth, but this was more a story of inevitable tragedy than it was of stupid people making bad choices. The three characters felt very real, trapped in a place where none of them wanted to be. When Thad and Aiden rob a dead meth dealer, that move seems not just dumb but also understandable under the circumstances and acts as a catalyst, taking the characters to the place that their pasts had already doomed them.

I loved the author's writing style and I cared about each of the characters. The reason that I wasn't crazy about the epilogue was that it smashed my hopes for one of the characters into smithereens. I will definitely read more by this author. The narration of the audiobook by MacLeod Andrews also very good.

I received a free copy of the e-book from the publisher, however I wound up listening to the audiobook borrowed from the library.

When you read a line in a novel comparing rising roadside dust to a fiddlehead fern, you know you are in the presence of a commanding Southern writer, one who prizes landscape and region as elements intricately linked to the story he is telling.

Such an author is David Joy, whose explosive first novel, “Where All Light Tends to Go” was an Edgar finalist but now stands eclipsed by his sophomore release, “The Weight of This World” (Putnam).

Joy is quickly cementing a position in a cadre of contemporary authors, led by Ron Rash, whose work is defined as Southern Gothic — fiction determined deeply by place. 

Like much of the writing in that canon, “The Weight of This World” is no easy novel to consume. The story of Aiden McCall and Thad Broom, inseparable lifelong friends, is a story of survival in rural North Carolina in its most raw form. The novel is riddled with pain — physical and, in multiple shades, post-traumatic stress — but is also textured with honesty and a craving to see the world more simply, more black and white, than the horrific reality that is so often presented.

Talking about that reality, Joy recently took time to answer a few questions for Mountain Times. The author’s answers have been edited for clarity.

Tom: A story teller you list as a mentor, Ron Rash, once told me that he prefers writing short stories over novels because with a novel he lives with it for two or three years. How long have you lived with “The Weight of This World?”

David: That story originally came rather quickly, in the sense that I had an image of what took place when Thad and Aiden went to get the drugs. Then, it was a matter of sitting with characters long enough that you start to recognize their motivations. That’s what takes the most time. I wrote that book over the course of about six months. I was on a tight deadline. My first book wasn’t even out yet. I basically had from the time I signed the contract until Jan. 1 — about five or six months. I finished the first draft that fast, but over the next year, I was lucky in the sense that this book got pushed off a year. What that allowed me to do was to think long and hard about why they were doing the things they were doing, and then to try and let that story evolve around that. You end up getting a lot more complexity out of it that way.

Tom: You once tweeted that “there was a time when Appalachia was literally the center of the world, and for some of us it still is.” What is it that draws you to center your stories on Western North Carolina, and in particular, Jackson County?

David: The main thing is that I don’t know anything else. When a character arrives in my mind, they have a very distinct accent. When I see something take place, it takes place in an area I know. For me, that’s Jackson County. There are a lot of writers who are able to write about places where they don’t live. A really great example of that is Ace Atkins. Ace Atkins writes his Quinn Colson series set in Mississippi, then he continues the Robert Parker series and that's set in Boston. Somehow or another, he's able to make both work. There's no way in hell I could write a story set in Boston. I don't even really know what they sound like. They have very specific mannerisms. As for a place, if you're not from Jackson County the story will still work. But if you are from Jackson County, you can go to very specific things that I name. For instance, that grave that (Aiden) hides the drugs behind at one point. That grave is there. In my mind that's where I saw it. ... In some ways I think I'm lucky that I already have that, and the other side of that is that it makes my job a lot easier in that I don't have to work to create those things. Those things already exist. As a result, you can just kind of watch the story unfold.

Tom: Parts of Jackson County, like much of Western North Carolina, is a study in contradictions — unbelievably expensive gated communities exist next to people living in unbelievable poverty. For both, the land is essentially the same, but your stories center on the latter. What draws you to this setting and the characters who populate your novels?

David: One thing I try to make it clear in this book is that the people I'm writing about are a very small percentage. The reality is that most people, even though they don't have much, are hard-working, God-fearing people. The people who are committing crimes and doing things in a place like Jackson County are the same people over and over again. That's Thad Broom and Aiden McCall in this novel. The reason I'm drawn to it is that, Cormac McCarthy had this idea that all literature is about tragedy, and I really like to take a character whose back is against the wall — because when you back somebody against a wall, their instinct is going to take over and you're going to get some type of reaction. That type of reactionary narrative is something that really interests me, you can really make something move. That's why I tell the types of stories I do. That's one thing I'm good at. There are a lot of writers that I really, really admire. Somebody like Silas House or Lee Smith are able to create a narrative that works at a much more leisurely, steady pace where things gradually build. I can't do that. What I'm good at is making things tear off at breakneck speed. That's why I focus on the types of people that I focus on.

Tom: That's certainly true from the way you open the novel. You might say “The Weight of This World” is not your average coming-of-age novel. But, would it be fair to say that it is the coming-of-age story destined for Thad and Aiden?

David: I think so. A lot of times, people want things to work out. One thing I've known my whole life is that sometimes things don't. For most of the people I grew up with, it didn't work out. I hate reading reviews, but sometimes when a book is about to come out, I find it really hard not to read reviews. I read someone who said that if (Aiden and Thad) had just noticed the beauty that was all around them they could have made something better of their lives. I couldn't even fathom that idea — there were very few opportunities for either of those two people to ever do anything. It was a house of cards, and what I was documenting was the collapse. It's that very end. That idea of tragedy, again, really interests me as a writer.

Tom: Speaking about tragedy, at one point in the novel, Thad notes that "whether a man was born one way or another, he wound up doing things that haunted him the rest of his life." Is this, then, a novel about fate?
David: That always comes in. It came in in “Where All Light Tends to Go.” And, it comes in here. The bigger issue for me in that quote is that this book is very much a book about trauma. What I wanted to do was to create three characters who were all governed by their pasts. With Aiden, it's very much what happened to him when he was a child. With Thad, it’s also very much what happened to him as a child, but also with him going to war (in Afghanistan). With his mother (April), it’s about her being sexually assaulted. The only one who might be conscious of that is Thad. Both Aiden and April, they can’t even recognize why they’re making the decisions they’re making. What’s governing their decisions are things that have happened in their past. For me, that’s what that statement’s about. In a lot of ways, it’s what the book is about. It’s about the things that happen to us … we carry them the rest of our lives and they come to govern how we react in future situations. The book is very much about that idea of post-traumatic stress.

Tom: Actually, three distinct forms of it. PTSD caused by the trauma of war, as Thad experiences, is one form we are perhaps most aware of, but there are certainly other forms. Why the deep exploration of this subject?

David: For a lot of reasons. One, is that — I didn’t serve in the military and I didn’t go to war — but I suffer from PTS. I’ve gone to doctors for it. The book is dedicated to a really great friend of mine who did serve in the military, he did come back from war and he wound up committing this tremendous act of violence. He walked into his house and he shot his father, he shot his brother and he killed himself. When I think about what leads to that type of violence, I find it very hard that war didn’t affect him in that way. I’ve known lots of other people … I knew certain things that took place. I didn’t have a linear narrative of events, so then it’s a matter of trying to figure out why is that happening and why is that person acting the way they’re acting? That’s where those back stories developed.

Tom: The novel is lyrical, beautifully written yet grounded in a reality that is harsh and desperate. The killing of children in war, the meth saturation in the mountains, generational poverty, lack of opportunities, a general absence of hope — and, I’m not going to go into details about what Thad does to extract revenge in the gorge because I want that to be a surprise for readers, but it’s still giving me nightmares — filter what is really a very dark novel. Do you have any concerns that such a story might be too much for some readers?

David: In my mind, this book is a treatise on violence, and I wanted to see where lines are drawn. No. 1, this isn’t a book for the average reader. It takes a very brave person to read a story like this. … It’s definitely too much for some readers, and that’s OK. This book isn’t going to be a New York Times best-seller. This book isn’t going to be a book that’s for everybody. There are going to be some who love it, and some who hate it. But, if they’re willing to read it, a question that really interests me is, at what moment do you turn away because you can’t take anymore, and that’s a perfect example. And, what moment do you cheer it on, because there are moments in the book when you want revenge. That switch in somebody’s head is very interesting to me. We live in a world where we are absolutely surrounded by violence. … We watch these things on television. For instance, let’s say we watch ISIS behead someone, and that absolutely disgusts us and we can’t imagine what would go through somebody’s mind to make them do that. Then, you say, what should we do to them? And, the man we ended up electing president said, I’m going to bomb the s--t out of them, and everybody in the whole arena roared and cheered this on. To me, one is no different from the other. How that line is drawn is very, very interesting to me. Once we begin to question that, we can begin to have conversations, really important conversations about violence. That’s what I mean when I say I want this book to be a treatise on violence. I don’t know that people will get it. But, I know that that’s what I was trying to do. And, partly because I’m trying to answer it for myself. … My hope is that there are some (readers) who get it. As an artist, you have to be willing to take those chances. I know what I was trying to do, and it’s all there.

Tom: Despair permeates the novel — Dante’s “abandon all hope ye who enter here” would be fitting for the road sign designating the Jackson County that Thad, Aiden and April live in. Was there ever any hope for any of these characters? Even the sliver of hope you give for April’s future seems destined to be crushed under the reality of her life experiences.

David: I think April has got the closest shot to doing anything, and part of that is because of her selfishness. … In her mind, it’s get off your a-- and do something. She has that type of mentality. In a lot of ways, she’s the strongest person in that book because she’s willing to do anything for herself. But, you’re right, it’s not a hopeful book by any means.

Tom: About Aiden, you write: “All the weight of this world seemed to be on him right then and he just stood there staring out into nothing at all, unsure how much longer he could go without buckling beneath it.” Is this speaking to the idea that everyone has a limit as to how much despair they can take?

David: Yes, and some people are stronger than most. That’s one of the most admirable qualities about everybody in that book. If you look at what every single one of them has dealt with, you can’t deny that strength. When I look at people I’ve known my whole life, and I look at what they’ve come from and what they’ve had to deal with, and I look at my own life and the things that bothered me, I realize how incredibly weak I am in comparison. That’s, in a lot of ways, what I’m trying to get at here. The humanity of those characters is incredibly important to me. Those aren't people you’d want to be friends with. You would see those people on TV and you would damn them. My hope is that, in some way or another, I make you care about them. Even if it’s for a split second.

Tom: Beyond the absence of hope, this is also a story about pride — we call it mountain pride in Appalachia — loyalty and honor. But, isn’t it also a story about redemption?

David: In some ways. Especially, it’s about trying to even out the world. In some ways that is redemption. At the end of the book … Aiden is about to kill somebody. For him, he’s snuffing out one more piece of darkness. For him, that is a matter of redemption.

Tom: Speaking of redemption, I noted a crossover character from “Where All Light Tends to Go.” Why this inclusion of Jacob here?

David: When you live in a place like this, the landscape becomes stacked with narrative. … This landscape, this culture holds onto story in the way that a city doesn’t. So, one of the things I like to try and do is layer that landscape. In that way, it’s a reflection of reality. If something like what happened in “Where All Light Tends to Go” really happened in Jackson County, every person in the county would know it. … Things like that have happened here. Nobody forgets. The stories are embedded. As a storyteller, that’s really interesting. As a novelist, you have the luxury if you want to set something very specifically in a place, you can do that. The book I’m finishing right now, same type of thing. I like playing around with that kind of thing. And, for a reader whose read all of your work, it’s kind of fun for them.

Well done and well-written book about rural drug addicts. Grim, unrelenting and, in the end, another book about the dregs of society. Another subject, like the drug cartels, that has been done to death.

This is really really dark. I was challenged by the fact that none of the characters are people I wanted to root for nor did I see a glimmer of hope. Thad, April, and Aiden are all masterfully drawn in relatively few words- this is a short novel. Joy makes good use of his setting. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I know that this is a portrait of a slice of life I have not experienced and hope never to. You will like this if you enjoy gritty, noir literature.

I wish I could say I liked this book - or even liked the characters - but I can't. While the writing is very good with vivid descriptions, the characters are unlikable. I couldn't even muster up a whole lot of sympathy for them - they all seemed to revel in their bad choices and blame their hard luck on their unhappy pasts. It's true they've had hard lives and experienced sad and violent things, but while some people bounce back from those influences, these characters don't.

A sad book. I give it 3 stars because the writing is good, but it's not a book I enjoyed.

“If there was a God, He wasn’t worth a damn. The devil wins out every time.”

Despite having a reader copy of this for months and despite the glowing review of a certain throne sitter, I never bothered taking a gander The Weight Of This World until the day before publication. When I started it during my lunch hour the other day I was hooked right from page one (in the immortal words of one Ron Burgundy, “boy, that escalated quickly!”) and knew when I arrived home that evening I’d be greeting my family in a not-so-motherly way - like by screaming "GET OUT OF HERE SO I CAN READ!" Turns out that wasn’t necessary, because they were already out doing basebally things and wouldn’t be home for a bit. It also turns out I wasn’t quite equipped to read all this misery in one go because rather than it feeling like ripping a Band Aid, these characters were experiencing something more like King Kong getting his first body wax.

Aiden and Thad had been like brothers ever since Aiden’s daddy blew his momma’s brains out in front of him in the living room one day, immediately followed by making quick work of offing himself as well. Thad wasn’t really living a dream life himself, seeing that his stepdaddy wasn’t too fond of having his (literal) red-headed stepchild under foot, so he’d been sent down to live in the trailer at the bottom of their property by himself.

If you’re interested in reading the types of suggestions Mitchell makes for book club, this one checks all the boxes. Like reading any trigger you could imagine? Enjoy hearing about all the awesomeness that comes with snorting crank and staying up for days on end? Do you love hearing about not one, but several characters blowing their heads off? A book where you know right away nothing could possibly end well? Then this is definitely the winner since it has all that and more that I won’t spoil for you.

This is a story that will teach you . . . .

“The line between good and evil was fine as frog hair.”

And that what goes around most definitely does come all the way back around.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

A dark book about two young men in the Appalachian mountain area of NC. Thad has come back from Afghanistan with scars both inside and out. Aiden has turned into a minor criminal because jobs are scarce. Together, they strip copper out of foreclosed houses and vacation homes and are living a meager existence. As Aiden calls it “trying to make an honest living stealing from millionaires and banks.”

The story alternates between Aiden and Thad’s POV. Joy does a great job of getting into both of their minds. Best friends, they are vastly different. I had to ask myself how I felt about these two. How much of what plays out is because of their past? Thad suffers from PTSD. Aiden had seen his father kill his mother and then commit suicide. They don't have many options but it's really hard to feel sympathy, especially when you factor in the drugs. In addition to Thad and Aiden, there’s April. She’s Thad’s mom and Aiden’s girlfriend. She also has some serious issues and once again, it’s not black and white when it comes to sympathy for her.

The writing here paints a grim picture. I don't think I've ever read a better description of how meth affects someone. The story gets truly twisted after their dope dealer accidentally blows his brains out. Parts of the book are exceedingly gruesome, so this is not for the faint of heart. I had to take breaks to get through some sections.

The writing really paints a picture. I tend to highlight passages I like on my kindle. There were a whole lot of highlights at the end of this book. I think this was my favorite quote from the whole book:

“No, life had a way of heaping shit by the shovelful like God was up there cleaning out the horse stalls and you just happened to be standing where He threw it.”

This isn’t an easy read, but it is a very good one.

My thanks to netgalley and Penguin Group/Putnam for an advance copy of this book.

Five star story that hooked me from the beginning and never let go. Thad was a very interesting character and I enjoyed spending time in his world. Very well developed story and characters, awesome book.

First, thank you to the publishers for making this available early through netgalley.
I was hyped but apprehensive about this one, as I was concerned "Where all light tends to go", David Joy's first novel, may have been a fluke. It wasn't. This story of Aiden and Thad, two friends immersed in the drug subculture so rampant in rural America is an absolute thrill. It starts violently and ends violently with some violence thrown in in the middle for good measure. Some of the most prominent themes for me were the cyclical nature of life, whole apple doesn't fall far theory, the loathing of a home town you can't ever seem to leave, and how many blessings can really be a curse. Reminds me so much of Larry Brown, Daniel Woodrell, and William Gay, quite elite company to be in after only his second novel.

David Joy is a wonderful storyteller. There were references to violence that I found difficult but the author doesn't exaggerate them and his narrative is so engaging that I found myself unable to put it down. A great follow up to Where All Light Tends To Go.

The juxtaposition of grim circumstances and the sheer beauty of this author’s words is astounding. This was my first time reading David Joy and my first foray into Appalachian-Noir or Grit Lit, whatever you want to call it, and I can honestly say, I’m hooked. I’m a reader that frequently dabbles in dark reads, but I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced this version of dark. Reminiscent of a train wreck . . . it felt wrong to stare, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from this shit-storm of bad choices.

With a gritty and almost dreary undertone, THE WEIGHT OF THIS WORLD delivers a look at what can happen when someone finds themselves down-and-out. When the harsh reality of abuse, PTSD and an economic downturn come to a head. When meth becomes your solace, your friend, your only escape from the nightmare your life has become.

The story opens with a bang . . . literally. Two gunshots blasts that rob 12-year-old Aiden of a family and mar his view of the world. It’s his best friend, Thad, tossed aside by his own mother and abusive step-father, that offers him a place to live and ultimately becomes his family.

Fast forward, ten plus years, and both Aiden and Thad are wasting away in the tiny mountain town of Little Canada, living in the same trailer, and stripping abandoned houses of copper to survive and feed their addiction. There’s no jobs and no chance for a better life without money and starting over somewhere new. At least that’s how Aiden sees things. Two years post deployment, Thad has a completely different outlook. He’s happy to spend his days blissed out on meth, wandering the mountainside or kicking back with his rescue, Loretta Lynn. Naturally, I had to wonder, was there any hope for these two?

Early on, a part of me expected this story to be about finding sympathy for these characters and uncovering their redeeming qualities. To find some sort of excuse viable enough to pacify my own feelings and acceptance of what was going down. To feel something deep on an emotional level. Those things sort of happened, but that’s not what really resonated the most. For me, it was about looking the truth dead in the eye . . . life can be ugly. Some of us don't have the luxury of choices. And then there's those of us that feel justified in making the wrong ones.

Guaranteed not to be to everyone’s tastes, there’s nothing pretty about this picture, it’s a jarring and all too real reality, but it’s one the author tells in such a compelling way. David Joy’s writing is nothing less than stellar. I cannot wait to check out his debut, Where All Light Tends to Go.

Aiden McCall was 12 years old the only time he heard I love you. The first line of this book might tell you that this is not a happy story.
It is a beautifully written book, haunting in its sordid and sad tale of the orphaned Aiden and his friend, Thad, who may as well have been an orphan himself.
As I said, this book is a literary wonder. It is just so dark that it isn't my cup of tea. (Sorry, David!)

Aiden McCall was twelve years old the one time he heard “I love you.” Even then he didn’t so much hear the words as read them on his father’s lips.

That night would be the last time he saw his father or his mother, those words would be his father’s final words to him. In the group home, on the nights that followed he shared a bed with a boy who loved baseball, collected baseball cards and wet the bed. But even those days wouldn’t last, and it wasn’t long before Aiden helped himself to some clothes, some food, went to school and took a bus that would lead him not back to the group home, but to a hunting camp he knew from his life before.

Spring made it easier to find enough to eat, scrounging for wild mushrooms, wild potatoes, ramps, and trout nearby. One day, a boy from school finds him drawing in the dirt with a stick, Thad, the only friend Aiden has really ever had.

As time passes, Thad and Aiden are almost inseparable, and Thad invites Aiden to live with him in his mother’s trailer. April, Thad’s mother lives on the property in a house with his stepfather, but the stepfather sent Thad to live in the trailer. After April agrees to let Aiden live there, the two boys head back to the hunting camp to gather Aiden’s possessions, what few he had, as evening descends and lightening bugs flitter about.

They slept on the ground, each with his hands interlocked under the crown of his head for a pillow. Through a scant opening in the canopy above them they watched stars move on to someplace else, and woke the next morning curled in the leaf litter and ferns like a pair of stray dogs. Their bodies shimmered with dew and they shivered to reclaim what warmth had escaped them. Thad gathered wood and Aiden built a fire. The world would never again seem so open.

Years pass in this small town of Little Canada, North Carolina. Aiden stays and Thad goes off to fight the war in Afghanistan. Thad returns a changed man, physically, mentally and emotionally altered by the things he’s seen and done.

Aiden and Thad make a living, if one can call it that, stripping wiring from foreclosed homes once the economy tanks and the housing boon goes bust. Aiden wants more than this, more than just scraping to get by, he wants to move to someplace bigger, where they can find work, someplace like Asheville. Thad never wants to leave this place, like Norman McLean’s character Paul, who says: “Oh, I’ll never leave Montana, brother.” Leaving Little Canada only one time, to go to Afghanistan, he’s not willing to leave again. Look where that got him, his back injury plagues him night and day, and really, all he wants is a break from the constant pain that haunts his days, and most nights, too. Afraid to sleep, afraid of the dreams that will come back to haunt him, Thad succumbs to sleep only when his body forces him to. All he can handle is how to make it through today. He no longer dreams about the future.

Aiden was thinking about the space between them, that two feet of space in the car that in reality stretched as wide as a universe.

Sometimes, as much as you might want things to change you don’t think as much about what that change is, or how you want it to manifest itself. As in life, change does occur, and with that change comes a tiny crack in their world that begins to show. Aiden aims to keep things together, from spilling out everywhere and ruining everything, while Thad can’t refrain from replaying the scene over and over, to himself, out loud, as though it were a scene out of a Hollywood movie.

While this story does have a dark side, with some very believable, broken characters living on the edge of abject poverty, there is also an almost unvarying message of faith, hope and redemption, accompanied by a glimmer of light that flickers but never truly fades.

This is the third of David Joy’s books I’ve read, beginning with his debut novel Where All Light Tends to Go, which I loved, followed by his memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey, which I also loved. I’ve loved them all. The writing is as amazing, wonderful, if perhaps not always quite as poetically lyrical as Where All Light Tends to Go, but then these characters seem very unlike Jacob McNeely. This story is transfixing, with characters who are remarkably authentic and convincing.

Highly recommended!

Pub Date: 07 Mar 17


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Penguin Group / Putnam