The Long Home

by William Gay

Book Overview

In a literary voice that is both original and powerfully unsettling, William Gay tells the story of Nathan Winer, a young and headstrong Tennessee carpenter who lost his father years ago to a human... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878448056
• ISBN13: 9781878448057
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing
• Length: 257 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

THERE'S SHOT WHISKEY, AND THERE'S SIPPIN' WHISKEY...

Shot whiskey is the type that so strong and just plain nasty that throwing it down your throat in a (hopefully) single swallow is the only way to imbibe it and survive. Sippin' whiskey, on the other hand, while still packing a punch, is more artfully crafted, with all sorts of artful nuances there to savor - you want to take your time with it, so you can more fully appreciate the care with which it was made. William Gay's prose is sippin' whiskey - there's a strength within that will leave you reeling, but there are so many subtleties to be found as well. His characters are vivid and believable, and he brings them to life slowly, rather than burying the reader in a swamp of description. We get to know them as we would a person in our day-to-day lives, through their actions, conversations, and what thoughts they might care to share with us - it's an experience that makes reading this novel all the more precious and amazing. The descriptions that occur within these pages are subtle as well - his vocabulary is astonishing, and when he can't find a suitable word already in general usage, he constructs one (always to good advantage). Time after time, reading this incredible novel, I found myself going over a passage again and again, to make sure that I wasn't imagining the creative powers at work here. Gay's literary gifts are amazing - but he never uses them in such a way as to overpower his characters. The novel is set in rural Tennessee in the 1940s - and that time and place is firmly established within the first few pages. I felt transported as I read it. Gay lives in Hohenwald, Tennessee - and his knowledge of the area and the people, and his obvious empathy toward them, give his fiction a sense of reality that is both gentle and ferocious.Dirt farmers, laborers, bootleggers, lawmen (both honest and crooked), women and men old before their time, young people aching for something - anything - more than what they see around them, what they see as their future if they remain where they are. The story here is basically an old one - that of an evil presence in the midst of normalcy, ignored or tolerated by most of the citizens in the area, that slowly establishes itself as a power not to be questioned without dire retribution. What's the old saying? `Absolute power corrupts absolutely' - the mighty tend to fall mighty hard, and they seldom see it coming. The evil character in this novel - one Dallas Hardin, bootlegger, honkytonk operator, would-be pimp and many more unsavory occupations - is one of the most memorable baddies I've come across in some time. The evil within him is made palpable - you can feel it in the air, it will make your skin crawl - by William Gay's skill.I've already started reading his second novel, and I've got my eye on his collected short stories as well. Gay's work was recommended to me by another author - and it's a recommendation for which I'll be grateful for a long, long time. This is high magick.

Powerful

A southern novel has never pulled me in like this before. I needed something to read and I was at a friend's house. I asked her what her favorite book on her bookshelf was and she gave me this one. I'm glad she did. The writing is so powerful, and so lyrical, that I could not put it down. Beyond that, the sentences are so rich, bursting with information, that no pages could be skipped. This is a story about the deep south, before everyone had telephones and automobiles, set in a remote area of Tennessee, a place with its own history and its own rules. You will not regret reading this book.

Literary Reading At It's Best!

The title of this review may seem pretentious, but, as an author, I rejoice in the literary art of story-telling at it's highest level. Mr. Gay, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Nashville at The Southern Festival of the Book, is a masterful story-teller. His characters are lively and real. The inner-workings of the mind and the tenacity of the southern male are reborn in this tale. Though some critics have said his work is Faulknerian in tone, Mr. Gay's prose is far more readable and, in my opinion, lyrical. His love for the area and the people about which he writes are reminiscent of Pat Conroy and his attachment of South Carolina's Low Country. Congratulations to William Gay for a job well done.

A dark, lushly written glimpse into evil and redemption

I first read William Gay's work in the Missouri Review a year or so ago, a beautiful, original story that still haunts me. I couldn't wait for his first novel to appear, and I took The Long Home with me on a seven-hour flight. The hours flew by, so absorbed was I in the characters springing up off the page. A wonderful book by an author I hope to see much more of.

Dark, funny, unforgettable: Buy this book now. Today.

I read this book with an increasing sense of wonder and awe. William Gay has written a moving, heartbreaking novel with people I believe and believe in, with language both poetic and taut, with detail to die for, with humor and wisdom and heart and darkness and a sense of place you might read a thousand books and never find. Buy this book and wrap it in Mylar and stand it on the shelf with your Faulkner and your Cormac McCarthy, and then take it down and start reading it over again. We all keep hearing about the next new voice in American fiction. Well folks, William Gay is a whole varied chorus of voices, all singing in perfect harmony. The song is dark, god yes, but you can't stop listening.