Kinfolks: The Wilgus stories

...or you've spent any time in Eastern Kentucky, the characters that Gurney Norman sketches here will ring so true that you will be laughing so hard you'll fall out of your chair. My favorite story is the correspondence of the old lady and her brother. On one hand, it's a story about a love-hate relationship with American identity, about how this country never quite seems to be what we're looking for no matter where life takes us, and the transplant experience of hillbillies in diaspora, but at the same time, I swear I know six or seven people in real life that Norman could have stolen these letters from. When my husband read this book aloud to me on a road trip, I almost peed my pants. I think I did pee my pants a little, come to think of it. I'm actually purchasing this as a gift for a friend who hasn't read it, and I felt compelled to write a review because from what the other customers have said about this book, you wouldn't get how real the stories are. Norman has a way of putting together a sentence to maximize the comedic effect and he's got something to say about Kentucky, but this isn't like... oh, it's not like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The stories are pretty outrageous and ugly. He gets down to the nitty gritty.

Gurney Norman spins yarns as well as any of the authors of this genre. He is able to add classical elements to his stories. You will find well-developed characters and some of them even have tragic flaws. This is fantastic reading beginning to end. Great book.

This unique, realistic collection of short stories presents the reader with psychologically complex characters threaded throughout one Appalachian family. Norman's greatest success is that he is able to access Applachian life with an unflinching eye and yet treat it with a tenderness that is neither maudlin nor overdone. This short book puts certain more popular Kentucky writers to shame, for it adamantly refuses to fall into Appalachian stereotypes and treats its characters as the complex, often flawed, but dignified people that they are. Say what you will about Mason and Offut; Norman represents the finest short story writing in the region and remains one of Kentucky's best known secrets

For many years as a Freshman English instructor, I assigned this book to students from all over the country. Though many of them groaned at the thought of reading a book "about hillbillies" when they first heard the title, Gurney Norman's wonderful comedic touch and unique, likeable, well-rounded characters never failed to win them over. Though Norman's book, in the best tradition of Southern fiction, is strongly rooted in "place," the author succeeds in transcending his stories' locales, making Wilgus and his family seem like people any of us might know and many of us would wish to know. You don't have to be from Kentucky coal-mining country to enjoy this book. You only have to love fine writing, powerful characterization, and sharply-honed humor in the best tradition of Faulkner, O'Connor, and Norman's friend and fellow Kentucky author Ed McClanahan.

Norman spins his story telling magic again. He returns to his roots in eastern Kentucky and beautifully tells the tale of Wilgus and his struggle to grow and search for meaning. The characters are teeming with life and the prose is fluid enabling one to travel along with Wilgus. If you have read Divine Right's Trip and yearn for more Norman this is it.