Tomato Red

This is the second of Daniel Woodrell's books I've read, and I read it in about two hours. The first thing I noticed was I'll never worry about a run-on sentence again, since the second half of the first page and the first half of the second page are one sentence, but it works like a charm. These poor, down and out folks who live in the Venus Holler section of West Table, MO stole my heart, no matter what they did. Our narrator, Sammy Barlach, doesn't go to the neighbor's house, he goes to her shack. Sammy wants to belong, to have people who love him, to have friends and to feel that he's worth something. When he breaks into a mansion, he sees a way of life that he knows is unattainable for him. He meets the equivalent of friends in Jamalee Merridew, her brother Jason, and their prostitute mother, Bev. Jamalee has hair so red Sammy calls her "Tomato Red." Jamalee and her gay brother and newly found friend, Sammy, all want to feel and be like more than what they're called--"white trash." Tomato Red is a memorial to people who feel that they are the lowest of the low, and the rest of society does nothing but validate that feeling for them.Jamalee wants out of Venus Holler and uses a musty old book of etiquette to try to learn and to teach Jason and Sammy the niceties of table manners, which fork to use and how to act in public in order to attain her dream of going to Florida and living a better life. The problem is she just can't get the money. She won't follow her mother's way of making a living by prostituting herself.Again, Woodrell has shown us the poverty-stricken people of the Missouri Ozarks and knows first hand by living there what it's really like. There is so much humor in the book that I laughed a lot, but even when it's funny, it might mean disaster for the characters. When Sammy, Jamalee and Jason take revenge on the Country Club for rejecting Jamalee's trying to apply for a job because she's "trash", it's a funny scene, but their revenge turns to tragedy.Such great dialect, even if it is overdone as some reviewers have said, it still makes the feel of the book authentic, and I come away from this book with each character being a multi-layered, complex person in my mind. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Woodrell's books, and this is one I definitely recommend.

This book is a chance to get up close and familiar with some people about whom many of us would say, "But for the grace of God, there go I." Tomato Red with the bright red dyed hair and the tiny, late teen body is the object but not the subject, nor narrator, of the story. He is a 30s something redneck, with a past to not look back on, and a questionable future, who hooks up with Tomato Red, her beautiful gay brother, and their mother, a well known town prostitute. The town is in the Ozarks just on the Missouri side of the Arkansas line. The language is supposedly Hillbilly, but peppered with analogies and anthropomorphisms, the likes of which I had never heard from uneducated hill people. Well, the author lives there and I grew up about 50 miles north, besides we were townies, so maybe it is authentic down there. Anyway it is colorful, and I mean that in an artistic sense not in an obscene sense (although there is some of that too). The story basically shows that the down and out not only pretty much stay down and out, unless they can get a big enough burst of energetic good fortune to betray their friends and split, but also are ridiculed in pretty severe ways (such as the fish hook drowning death of the gay boy) by the slightly less down and out from the other side of the tracks - these are the Townies. In the case of the narrator, who was the broken heart betrayed by the splitting Tomato Red, the pressure of the situation built to the point where something had to give, and as in many such cases, the result was disastrous - bringing us to the noir end of a dire tale, with only the prostitute mom maintaining, as she always had. This is the second Woodrell book I have read; I think I liked the popular Winter's Bone better (I go for slightly happier endings), but I must admit this one is staying with me for a while, which is, I guess, one of the marks of a good writer.

Daniel Woodrell pegs the lower class whites (aka "White Trash") and their character, or not, better than anyone I've read. Be it the Mountains, the South (like I am) or somewhere like Southie, the same sentiments, smell and feel apply. As in Winter's Bone, the female lead has an integrity, as well as hopes and wants (mostly to leave "this place"). A Southern Shakespearean Tragedy.One of my favorite parts is the story behind the part of town across the tracks, "Venus Holler," where most of the story takes place (my chopping doesn't do it justice but I'm doing this for brevity):"Venus Holler was the most low-life part of town.... Venus Holler as a name was one of those cruel country jokes that sticks.... The holler naturally lay across the tracks from the decent citizens of West Table (Missouri).... There was an awful chunky road through the holler, a road that had been paved out of pity once back in the bygones but had busted up over the years and lain unrepaired and become forever rugged. The houses have their roofs pulled down low over the front stoops, like hats worn at a sulky angle over hungry stubbled faces. Back in the heydays this was where the whores all had to live, the whores who serviced all the cattlemen and pig farmers who shipped their stock from West Table and went on toots during their visits, as well as the local lovelorn. The name got to be Venus Holler, I'm told, precisely because a goddess is the very last dame you'd ever expect to find there--but if ever you did, for three bucks you could [screw] her too."I highly recommend this book.

Tomato Red reads a bit like a social realist play, with its gritty realism and harsh truths, and small cast of well drawn characters. The dialogue and interactions between Sammy, Jamalee, Jason and Bev is pitch perfect, and Woodrell does an admirable job of immersing the reader in their world. As ever, the prose is nicely crafted, and Woodrell has a deft hand for turning expressive phrasing and sharing interesting observations and insights into social relations. Where the book falls a little short perhaps is with respect to plot, which is quite ponderous at times as if Woodrell is tentatively feeling his way, and the ending felt a little false and rushed. I've become a huge fan of Woodrell's country noir; Tomato Red didn't quite match some of his other works, but its still a fine, entertaining read.

Oh my what an author! I love reading in the evenings as a form of complete & simple escapism from the hectic pace of every day London life. His words are melodic the script almost tangible and the feel of melancholy felt slowly but surely on the pages. It has awakened my love for reading once again. I was always too busy with everything else and had forgotten the beauty of simply opening up a book and drifting into that fictional world. His world is one filled with poverty, class divide, dreams and hopes of wonderfully crafted and unforgettable characters. Superb stuff.

This book, written in Woodrell's sparse but beautifully crafted style, really evokes the characters and their environment to great effect. The story is beautifully structured and the voice it is written in is unusual enough to engage the reader, whilst being accessible too. I feel the book has more heart than the more celebrated Winter's Bone and is a rounder book. I have already passed this on and will be buying more books from this writer with a truly unique voice and style.

A master with words and people and the ways we do. Go ahead and read it!

Surprising because eveything else I've read from Daniel Woodrell has been brilliant. He seems to try too hard in this novel. Less is more.