River City Reading

I grew up in the Midwest, but reading about the South always feels like going home. This time, Reading in Threes takes a walk into the dark corners of the American South.

Slim, a former solider, and his best friend The Beast are heading for Milwaukee in hopes of jump-starting The Beast’s NBA career following his dismissal from UNC’s basketball team. Before they make it out of their small town, a fierce hurricane forces them into a small bar and closer to a man who has been following them both.

Though his novel is titled Slim and The Beast, Samuél L. Barrantes first introduces readers to Slim and Dykes, the Sergeant at Stoke Ridge Military Academy who eventually stalks the pair of friends through the hurricane. Each of the novel’s characters has a vastly different background, which allows the story to expand from its small focus in the bar. Though Dykes comes across as perfectly mythic, over exaggerated and almost larger than life through the eyes of Slim and The Beast, I struggled with the way his sexuality was similarly characterized. But as a whole, Slim and The Beast is an interesting intersection of controlled character study and wild ride unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Jacob McNeely has never lived up to the expectations of his ruthless father, who runs a meth ring in the area surrounding their small North Carolina town. Still, he drops out of school and throws himself into his father’s world in hopes of someday earning enough money to leave town with his first love, Maggie.

David Joy writes with the sense he’s intimately familiar with every corner, scratch and screen door he conjures up in his debut novel. Without reading like overworked dialect, a long drawl threads itself through the pages and knits together the characters’ well-worn relationships. Jacob’s internal conflict over the morality of his work gradually turns external and brings Where All Light Tends to Go to a close with an absolutely gut-wrenching conclusion.

“Those days alone were the first time I ever remember praying, and that’s the thing about folks who aren’t used to offering words to God. Praying’s easiest when you need something, selfish kinds of prayers, and that’s the type I prayed.”

In the summer of 1989, a Baton Rouge neighborhood is rocked by news that fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson had been raped outside her home. Several suspects surface over the next  few years, but with little evidence, Lindy, her family and her neighbors attempt to return to life as usual. My Sunshine Away examines the years just before and after that summer through the eyes of a teenage boy both enchanted by Lindy and haunted by the unsolved crime.

My Sunshine Away‘s unnamed narrator quickly hooks readers with his candid confessions and gradual release of information regarding the suspects in Lindy’s rape, including himself. Through this, Walsh creates a tense atmosphere of suspense without losing the heart of the novel. Though I was a little disappointed by the neatness of the ending, the story itself is one full of honesty and nostalgia with the power to grip readers from start to finish.