Tomato Red

The ending! The author wrote 300 pages of story that took me to an ending I didn't see coming. Highly recommend

In this novel, the second I have read by this author, Daniel Woodrell shows once again how adept he is at capturing not only the rhythms of his characters' speech, but of their very lives. Involved, as they are, in petty crime, prostitution, drug use and gut-wrenching poverty, they are nonetheless shown to be human beings -- capable of love and devotion, even feats of heroism.The main character, Sammy Barlach, is someone you'd probably cross the street to avoid if you saw him coming. The trouble for a few of the folks in this dark novel -- both poignant and comic, by turns -- is that they DON'T see Sammy coming, or at least they don't recognize the brooding power that lies within him, built up over years and years of clinging by his fingernails to the bottom rung of the social ladder.Sammy finds himself involved with -- and subsequently taken in by -- two siblings and their mother. Jamalee and her brother Jason are poor but engaging -- they have dreams of getting out of the Venus Holler section of West Table, MO. They have a plan, and now it involves Sammy. Their mother, Bev, described aptly on the inside jacket, 'can turn a trick as easily as she can roll a joint'. Jamalee and Jason abhor (no homonymic pun intended) her prostituional lifestyle -- but at the same time that they resent her for this, they love her, and ache for what she has become.Jason is a handsome young man -- the female customers at the hair salon where he is apprenticed swoon over him. His sister tells Sammy that 'grown women in the grocery store throw their panties at him with their numbers written on them in lipstick'. Jason's major difficulty in fitting in with his small community is that he happens to be gay -- a lifestyle not embraced by small-town Southerners, to say the least. At seventeen, it is a fact of his life with which he is still wrestling -- and it is painful to watch, as it must be for those who go through it in life. How can he be true to himself and somehow manage to suffer the slings and arrows hurled at him by an intolerant society?The novel's action builds well to an almost unbearable pitch -- the other Woodrell novel I've read, THE DEATH OF SWEET MISTER, is equally gripping. Sammy narrates the story very effectively -- his phrasing and turns of speech are jewel-like -- and for an uneducated petty criminal with few social graces, he's a pretty amazing philosopher.The book's finale is as heartbreaking as it is inevitable -- but this is definitely a journey I can recommend. Woodrell is a master -- I'm going to read everything by him I can find.

...and the moral of the story is that home is where they have to let you in. Sammy's looking for home. Who doesn't want a place to belong? The search, this longing for "my people" is primal. Some of us find them, some of us don't. Sometimes it's family, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's a good thing when we find them, sometimes not. Some of us search for this connection without being fully aware that we're doing so. E.B. White's character in The Door says, "My heart has followed all my days, something it cannot name." Sammy names his heart's desire... 'a bunch that'll have me'. I wasn't going to care much for being lonely again, if that's what was coming. That hadn't been said-get out-it hadn't come to that yet, but I could see the same calamity that always hounded me hunkered at the edge of the campfire light, yawning and picking it's teeth, lurking. In my heart, you see, I knew I could live here. I didn't want to leave, or be left, either. Where did Sammy come from? Details of his life before Tomato Red took over are sketchy. He tells Jamalee, "My mom left town just before I was born" and when Jamalee cajoles him to say something good about his own mother he says, "She's not around anymore. That's a good thing." He gives us a barely a glimpse of the small Arkansas town he came from and lets us guess at the horrors there and its ultimate disappointment for him: There was no bunch there that would have him. So Sammy amputates his past like a diseased limb and lives in the present and in his quest for home, a place and people to belong to. He doesn't want to anticipate the frightening future. He's not going anywhere in particular and he knows it. He vaguely envisions ending up in prison but isn't overly concerned by the thought. Maybe that's the last ditch resort to a place to belong. The Merridew family of Venus Holler, through a warped sequence of events, take Sammy in. Ambitious Jamalee, aka Tomato Red, threatens to steal Sammy's heart but shows little in the way of a heart to offer in return. Her beautiful brother, Jason, seems to be the only thing Jamalee is capable of loving, and even Jason is fodder for her ambition. Jamalee, the sister, flawed beyond redemption and Jason, tragically beautiful, play out their roles in the town that assigned them their fate the day they were born, and in the end, we see it could have ended no other way. I know I must have read a book as beautifully written as Tomato Red, and I have read books with more satisfying plots and climaxes, but just now in the afterglow of this little treasure, I can't remember what they were. This is a small book packed full of prose that flows, descriptions of feelings I've sensed and been unable to articulate, and emotions so strong they grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go. It's one of the few books I'm destined to read again and again, sighing all the while, "Lord, I wish I'd written that." I sensed the ending and was not disappointed or surprised. Woodrell rema

Combine the characters of William Faulkner, the atmospheres of Cormac McCarthy, and the mind bending metaphors of Tom Robbins...these will give a flavor of Daniel Woodrell. "Tomato Red" gave me an insight into a world I was not born to and hope never to inhabit; the rural American South chronic underclass. People you may see driving in an old beat up car, or standing on a corner in a small southern town, but hope never to meet in a dark alley. You probably won't like these people, but you will be fascinated by their stories and will better understand their self-destructive behavior. Main character and small time low-life Sammy Barlach has the soul of a poet, even if his creative muse is expressed with breaking and entering. I will read more of Mr. Woodrell, for sure.

Daniel Woodrell has been called a "writer's writer," and Tomato Red is a good reason why. He doesn't cheat the reader with lazy or sensationalized tripe. He develops interesting characters, places them in vivid, engaging and humorous circumstances and writes lines you will repeat to your friends or to yourself to make you laugh.Like his prior novel "Give Us A Kiss," this book features well developed characters whose quirkiness and white trash bloodlines mix to make them full of life and not a little sexual tension.The subhead of "Kiss" was "A Country Noir." That hits the nail on the head. There's even a message to "Tomato Red" thrown in almost as a bonus because the book is so entertaining you hardly need it. But the message is as timely as it is poignant. Now I'm not going to tell you what the message is. Believe me, it's worth the time to read it yourself.If I had to recommend one thing to take on a flight from New York to LA "Tomato Red" would be it. You could easily down it during the flight and have some time left to turn on others to it.Enjoy!