seem straight out of John Boorman's film Deliverance. The majority of the inhabitants of Knockemstiff, Ohio. It may be as ragged as junkies' jeans, but this has the potential to be a whiskey-stained classic * Time Out * Pollock treats readers to inventive, melodic and captivating storytelling. Like Denis Johnson, Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver before him, Pollock populates his stories with low-lives and junkies, dreamers and drunks.He is a master of voice and phrasing, and there are some knockout, pitch-perfect sentences. The book is l aced with dry, black humour * New Statesman * A former paper-mill worker and a recovering alcoholic, Pollock came to writing late in life. Loosely based on the author’s own life in the town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, the linked stories portray a community riven by violence, drug addiction, and sexual abuse. His economical prose excels in its lurid (and often scatological) detail, and his physical descriptions are superb. Knockemstiff is a 2008 short story collection by American author Donald Ray Pollock. Pollock's writing is lean and unflinching. A fiendishly enjoyable collection * Daily Telegraph * To get an idea of Donald Ray Pollock's astonishing new book, one could try to imagine a drunken punch-up between a redneck Hemingway and an amphetamine-fuelled Raymond Carver.
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