The Devil's Dream

This book is, along with P. F. Kluge's novel "Eddie and the Cruisers," possibly the best novel about what music means and where it comes from that I've read. The sense of time and place is unerringly evoked, the characters are simultaneously archetypal and idiosynchratic, and the overlap of both generations and musical styles makes a rich, rewarding experience. Really, really top-notch stuff.

What a wonderful book. Quite often, a book is real good until the ending, and then I'm let down, But this has a really good ending too. This tale is really excellent: a verbal piece of art. I liked all the lineage and interconnections in this large musical family. I learned what it's like to have mucic within you -- to write as well as perform. I liked the character developments -- no one all good or all bad, but all very interesting. I recommend this book highly. One learns about US history, country music, human nature, and it's entertaining to boot!

This is another of Lee Smith's novels that progresses chronologically through generations, each successive generation represented through a group of narrators (like Oral History) and again her ability to delineate character through that character's voice is amazing. I really respect her as a writer and will keep reading her books until I have exhausted their availability. This time there are five generations of the country music industry, going from backwoods denizens of Grassy Creek who are downright suspicious of fiddle music, trusting no music but the "old hard high" hymns and progressing on down past the Grand Ole Opry to today. I have often made fun of the maudlin excesses of Nashville: when my adult son was a toddler, friends, my wife and I used to give the kid quarters to put in the jukebox in the St. Johnsbury diner to play "I'm Hiring a Wino to Decorate Our Home." (Evidently folks from the Academy where one friend worked did not come to the diner, and the regulars there seemed to think it was cute). Anyway, I was surprised by how affecting I found this book to be. Smith finds the real people behind "genuine country," or at least she creates an illusion that she has captured the actual personalities in their reactions to the hard-won petty triumphs and the terrible sudden tragedies and all the rest behind the sappy songs. I liked the book a lot and Smith obviously loved her subject, judging by the pages of acknowledgements at the end and her comments in them.

Lee Smith once again writes about mountain people and their ways of life. She chronologically takes the reader from the early musical interests of a family who become sensations in Music City. The story is heart-warming, real, and quirky rolled into one. A definite must-read

I don't mean the above as a pun (although in this context it would certainly work as one.) I found that this book stayed with me long after I read it because of Lee Smith's skillful use of imagery and of irony. I know that I will never forget the nearly-mystical love story of Dory and Richard Burlage. What impressed me the most about this book is the absolute authenticity of detail that allows the reader to really feel a part of the stories.