From Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors. It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence … out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; intelligent); Cob (short; heavy set; a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest; thin; ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family’s entire fortune, his life is put on a surprising, unforgettable, and violent trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. No good can come of it. Or can it?
In the gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre’s literary masters.
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In a crowded room full of voices, Don Pollock’s voice is so distinct you’ll hear first and won’t ever, ever forget it. Nor will you want to. And the kicker is this: He somehow keeps getting better.
The Heavenly Table is a ferociously gothic ballad about desperate folks with improbable dreams and scant means. It is potent and chimeric, dank, violent, swamped in tragedy — and funny as hell.
Donald Ray Pollock’s “The Heavenly Table” was published in 2016 by Doubleday. The novel is a dark vision of American gothic; a time of dirt-poor farmers cast adrift in the rural south. While this is indeed a dark story, it is not totally so. “The Heavenly Table” caused me to laugh out loud more than once, and then to be almost appalled at what I was laughing at. Grim and violent, gritty and funny by turns, the novel charts the course of a collision between two families.
Pearl Jewett is the patriarch of the Jewett clan. This man is well up in the running for worst father in a modern novel. Jewett and his three sons make up the entire family. There is no maternal influence, not anymore. Mrs. Jewett departed the world in a fairly horrible way. Given the circumstances, she was more than likely happy to go. Fortune rains bad luck on the Jewett boys. A crime of opportunity and misunderstanding pushes the Jewett brothers onto a violent and erratic journey.
North of the Jewetts, a simple farmer is being swindled out of his meager family fortune. Ellsworth Fiddler is no genius, as his wife Eula would be happy to confirm. With all of their money gone, they may lose the family farm. Ellsworth’s search for their errant son causes his life to cross the path of now bloody Jewett Brothers.
The collision of the two families takes place in a small American town. The little burg is populated with a collection ordinary people, odd-balls, and at least one monster. Like any good showdown in a small American town, there is death, redemption, and surprise.
I recommend this novel to readers who are fans of American Gothic, or Cormac McCarthy, or Patrick DeWitt. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark, funny, engaging work.
The Heavenly Table is the latest and strongest evidence that Donald Ray Pollock is one of the most talented and original writers at work today. With uniquely vivid and graceful prose he renders a tale destined to linger in the reader’s mind, a story by turns violent and darkly amusing, and always powerful. The novel is sure to be ranked among the year’s best.
I loved this book and it’s going in the top ten for the year. I can easily understand why it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, it’s gritty and vulgar at times. The characters are well-drawn and three dimensional. I had a difficult time putting this one down and when I did the characters continued to thrash about in my thoughts like a large fish on the deck of a boat begging to be thrown back.
The writing style is from the sixties and early seventies where the story is told more than shown. Which means there is more dense narrative rather than scene/dialogue. With the author’s great skill level, he makes the dense prose work by manipulating the points of view. There are sometimes three points of view on the same page. The author shifts seamlessly from one character to another displaying different perspectives. This allowed me to drop into the, “Fictive Dream,” and remain there intrigued at every turn.
In the beginning there’s a sense of too many characters and plot lines but because of the great skill level displayed I trusted the author. The different characters who had no logical relationship with the three main characters were braided together in their story lines running headlong into a dynamic conclusion.
I already purchased this other book, The Devil All The Time, and placed it very gently on the TBR pile. But it is already calling to me. I highly recommend this book.
David Putnam author of The Bruno Johnson Series.
Donald Ray cannot write a bad book. Stephen King used to be my favorite author, and I still love him….but after I found Pollock, there was no turning back. I have one fault with the man…I wish he had written as many books as King to fill my library.
Anyway, on to the book..
This book is another twisted, country noir delight. The characters are out there, as most of Pollock’s characters are. People I can wholly relate to, being from Kentucky. One thing I love about D.R.P.’s books is, while immersed in his stories, you truly do forget any hardships or crazy shit going on in your own life. That is a huge thing for an author to be able to do. You stop frettin’ about your own life’s obstacles and get so involved with the characters that you shed tears for them, laugh for them, or want to choke one out. That’s talent folks.
Well, it is not as good as The Devil All the Time, but what other books in this century have been? Very few. Pollock’s character building is on the level of Cormac McCarthy, but I must remind readers that these are dark, tragic, and twisted characters and not all ends well for most of them. The story is not for everybody. Some people will find it way too dark and pessimistic toward humanity’s general will toward others. Some may find it unnecessarily violent and vulgar. I take the darkness, violence, vulgarity, and pessimism with a grain of salt. Some people actually are this way, but most are not. The best stories always take us to the edges of both the good and bad in human character. Pollock tends to take readers to the edge of the bad abyss to let us look in, but he always make sure that what he shows us is real. I have known someone like everyone he writes about. I will admit that I would have liked the story to remain focused on the brothers a bit more, but that is my wish not necessarily a criticism of the story.
Excellent
Good western, some realistic characters, and hard adventures.
Digs deep into the psyche of a people living in abject poverty. Life becomes cheap, food and alcohol the ultimate in ambition.
well constructed characters.
Pollock belongs to the family tree of Sherwood Anderson, Ron Rash and other genious observers of the great American grotesquerie. His previous work in Knockemstiff and Devil All the Time is more raw-boned and scathing than The Heavenly Table, but this one has a deftness of craft and character that mark it as an American classic.
As always with Pollock, we’re heaved into a hard-scrabble dysfunction few of us can imagine – but one that likely plays out within a stone’s throw from every where we’ve been.
Brothers, abased and abused, seek solace and solidarity in a world they never made. Nothing Pollock writes is anything less than genuine…and it hurts like truth. Not for fans of the tea-time mystery.
See Also:
Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio
Ron Rash – Burning Bright / The Risen
Donald Ray Pollock is a master-worker. This great novel flows like buttermilk, so smooth and entertaining that you won’t be ready for the left hook it delivers to your heart or its sophisticated moral analysis of human life. Pollock has an omniscient eye like Gogol, taking in a vast scene while spinning tales within tales. Readers will love him, writers will study him.
The Heavenly Table is brilliant and unforgettable. In his trademark blend of humor and pathos, Donald Ray Pollock gives us a view into life’s darkest corners, without ever forgetting there is a lighter side as well.
Donald Ray Pollock’s “The Heavenly Table” is a disgusting and vulgar book. I loved it; I loved it so much that a couple of months after finishing it I read it again.
Pollock’s approach to examining the human condition and exposing life’s frailties is unique. His stories are set in places where we readers of literary fiction rarely go, and feature the kind of people we don’t encounter, at least on purpose. The thoughts that inhabit the minds of the characters, and the ghastly things they do make us gasp. Literally.
Set in the American south at the time of World War I, the story revolves around three brothers, born in the most wretched poverty imaginable, and even then imaginable only by a mind such as Pollock’s. The brothers commit a hideous crime and escape their world on horseback. They then proceed to cut a swath of robbery and murder through a small stretch of territory before being apprehended while enjoying city life with their gains. Along the way they meet many fascinating characters: some basically bad, some reprehensible and some purely evil. There are also some sympathetic players who are as benign as their class and upbringing allows. The reader gets to know all of these people’s hopes and dreams, their sad histories, and their nasty habits (in the sense that Jeffrey Dahmer had a nasty habit).
Partway through the book I was saying to myself that I just can’t believe I’m still reading this. After a while, though, I was saying out loud to anyone who would listen that the book is really, really great. And asking who is this guy Pollock anyway?
I came to realize that Pollock is taking a sledge hammer to the thin veneer of civilized behavior that coats humanity, revealing all that is good and all that is bad in our nature. If you could build an impregnable fence around a prosperous suburban neighborhood, and then suck out all the wealth, what would all those people do? “The Heavenly Table” gives us an idea, and it isn’t pretty. But it is prettier than it seems at first. This book will make you think for a long time.