Gone South, by Robert McCammon
McCammon was a bestselling horror novelist a while back; his heyday was the 80s and early 90s. After publishing Gone South in 1992, he took a ten-year break from publishing. Nowadays he writes historical mysteries set in American Colonial times, the Matthew Corbett series (Speaks the Nightbird: A Novel (Matthew Corbett Book 1)
), which looks interesting. McCammon was not a real favorite of mine but I did find his books to be enjoyable and engrossing. I especially liked Swan Song
, a Stand-esque post-apocalyptic novel on a bigger, more batshit, and more cartoony scale, and Boy's Life
, one of those pastoral nostalgia-with-horror, boy-centric novels which King and Bradbury wrote the Ur-examples of. (If comparisons to more famous writers doing similar things don’t make McCammon want to rip out his hair, I will eat my hat; I almost feel bad doing it too but am comforted with the idea that he will almost certainly never read this review. Mr. McCammon, if you do read it, please pretend you didn’t and don’t comment.)
This book turned up while I was doing some fall cleaning and bookshelf rearranging. I picked it up and read a few pages while trying to decide if I was going to keep it or not, and ended up reading the whole thing. I can’t quite say it’s good, but it’s definitely entertaining and gonzo. (Warning: the dog dies.)
I appreciate any book that features conjoined twin bounty hunters Flint and Clint (the latter consisting of a mouth which can eat but not speak and a single arm which can hold a small gun) forced to team up with a down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator named Pelvis Eisley, who hunting a Vietnam vet dying of Agent Orange-induced leukemia who’s on the lam due to having killed the asshole who was foreclosing on his truck and who is reluctantly giving a ride to a young woman in search of the probably legendary Bright Girl who she thinks can remove her disfiguring birthmark. There is also a gang that smuggles heroin in live alligators. Which sort of makes sense when they point out that no one would want to search a live alligators. I said sort of. They get involved in the plot because the author wanted to have them in the book they mistake Flint/Clint for someone they’re mad at, then later… I forget why they come back later. I assume because the author wanted them to. You can’t put drug-smuggling alligators in the bayou in Act I and not have them eat someone by Act III.
I mock - just a little - but I honestly did enjoy this book. I wouldn’t call it a great American novel but it would probably make a highly entertaining movie with a whole lot of juicy roles for actors, maybe directed by the Coen Brothers, and kind of reads as if it was written with that in mind. Sadly, so far that movie exists only in the temporarily fevered imagination of anyone reading this book.
I leave you with these immortal lines, which are typical of the book’s enthusiastic approach:
Pelvis, his wig gone and his contorted face brown with mud, was trying to grip the timbers and pull himself up, but not even his maddened strength could do it with Flint on the other end of the cuff. Blood floated on the surface around Flint’s arm, and he saw at least four alligators coming across the corral after them, their tails sweeping back and forth with eager delight.
Gone South
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2220682.html. Comment here or there.
), which looks interesting. McCammon was not a real favorite of mine but I did find his books to be enjoyable and engrossing. I especially liked Swan Song
, a Stand-esque post-apocalyptic novel on a bigger, more batshit, and more cartoony scale, and Boy's Life
, one of those pastoral nostalgia-with-horror, boy-centric novels which King and Bradbury wrote the Ur-examples of. (If comparisons to more famous writers doing similar things don’t make McCammon want to rip out his hair, I will eat my hat; I almost feel bad doing it too but am comforted with the idea that he will almost certainly never read this review. Mr. McCammon, if you do read it, please pretend you didn’t and don’t comment.)
This book turned up while I was doing some fall cleaning and bookshelf rearranging. I picked it up and read a few pages while trying to decide if I was going to keep it or not, and ended up reading the whole thing. I can’t quite say it’s good, but it’s definitely entertaining and gonzo. (Warning: the dog dies.)
I appreciate any book that features conjoined twin bounty hunters Flint and Clint (the latter consisting of a mouth which can eat but not speak and a single arm which can hold a small gun) forced to team up with a down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator named Pelvis Eisley, who hunting a Vietnam vet dying of Agent Orange-induced leukemia who’s on the lam due to having killed the asshole who was foreclosing on his truck and who is reluctantly giving a ride to a young woman in search of the probably legendary Bright Girl who she thinks can remove her disfiguring birthmark. There is also a gang that smuggles heroin in live alligators. Which sort of makes sense when they point out that no one would want to search a live alligators. I said sort of. They get involved in the plot because the author wanted to have them in the book they mistake Flint/Clint for someone they’re mad at, then later… I forget why they come back later. I assume because the author wanted them to. You can’t put drug-smuggling alligators in the bayou in Act I and not have them eat someone by Act III.
I mock - just a little - but I honestly did enjoy this book. I wouldn’t call it a great American novel but it would probably make a highly entertaining movie with a whole lot of juicy roles for actors, maybe directed by the Coen Brothers, and kind of reads as if it was written with that in mind. Sadly, so far that movie exists only in the temporarily fevered imagination of anyone reading this book.
I leave you with these immortal lines, which are typical of the book’s enthusiastic approach:
Pelvis, his wig gone and his contorted face brown with mud, was trying to grip the timbers and pull himself up, but not even his maddened strength could do it with Flint on the other end of the cuff. Blood floated on the surface around Flint’s arm, and he saw at least four alligators coming across the corral after them, their tails sweeping back and forth with eager delight.
Gone South
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2220682.html. Comment here or there.