Give Us a Kiss

By Daniel Woodrell

Book Overview

"My imagination is always skulking about in a wrong place." And now Doyle Redmond, thirty-five-year-old nowhere writer, has crossed the line between imagination and real live trouble. On the lam in his soon-to-be ex-wife's Volvo, he's running a family errand back in his boyhood home of West Table, Missouri -- the heart of the red-dirt Ozarks. The law wants his big brother, Smoke, on a felony warrant, and Doyle's supposed to talk him into giving up. But Smoke is hunkered down in the hills with his partner, Big Annie, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Niagra, making other plans: they're about to harvest a profitable patch of homegrown marijuana.

Doyle takes just one look at Niagra's flattering red boots before joining his brother's scheme. Of course it means dealing with the law and maybe worse -- the Dollys. A legendary clan of largely criminal persuasion, the Dollys have been feuding with the Redmonds for generations. Now they want a piece of Smoke's cash crop, even if it means killing to get it. Doyle is fast realizing that yes, you can always put the country back in the boy...but sometimes that's not smart.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316206202
• ISBN13: 9780316206204
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

First get rid of all the other books!

This guy is that good. Burke, Grisham, Norden, Hegwood, all you southern noir types go home. Woodrell is that good. This guy is a real writer's writer. A-1 on the jukebox and nowhere on the charts I guess. Give Us a Kiss displays a voice and style that harkens back to Faulkner, James M. Caine and Walker Percy. A true gem.

Humdinger noir kicks some downhome butt

Can't get much better than this Woodrell guy--not when it comes to fusing violence with country living. Dag nabbit, they just go together like spittle on a backy-chewin geezer's whiskers. Woodrell is somethin' fresh and mean and lonesome and true in the land of the hardboiled. He takes you down a crick with Doyle Redmond, his protagonist, all cozied up with 19-year old Niagra, the daughter of Doyle's big brother Smoke, and when them two drift down that flowing water, heat just naturally gets turned up. Cause Niagra has flames lickin' up her legs--her sexy red boots--and Doyle's first look at 'em does him in. He's hooked.Smoke's woman, Big Annie, cottons to Doyle in a sisterly/motherly way since he's her beau's brother and also after her daughter. The four of them harvest their dope (i.e., marijuana) cash crop which a pack of nasties, the Dollys, try to weasel in on. Take over, in fact. And, yes, it is a backwoods legendary feudin' thing--the Redmonds vs. the Dollys. The noir-ness of the book is not just this feud; it's Doyle's and Smoke's tendencies to feel things in the extreme.This is a great read cause Woodrell is a mighty fine writer. He knows how to sling the right words, blend them smooth as you please in an eminently readable way. Most entertaining. A genuine pleasure, if you ask me.Pick it up and have a dang good time.

Great fun

I loved this book. I've never read anything like it...it makes plain country folk cool. I'm glad I found another writer to add to my list of personal favorites.

Now this is writing!

Why do truly creative writers like Woodrell get overshadowed by the mass market pap and hack writers? Woodrell tells great stories with original spins on what some might call stock pulp fiction characters in neat, compact books that his best selling contemporaries attempt to tell with less entertaining and often outright dull results and they do so in 300, 400+ pages! I read this book based on its subtitle and the slick jacket blurb. Holt knows to publish and package a good crime novel. I'm starting on Woodrell's earlier stuff now. He and John Straley are the two writers who deserve a lot more attention and a lot more readers.

This ain't no fantasy, city folks

As a fellow Hillbilly from Woodrell's neck of the woods, I can attest to the accuracy of everything the man says. Don't fool yourself, this may be listed as fiction, but I can take you to the exact spot...or a close enough facsimile. Great writing, and the best grasp on 'payback' I've seen since I dumped this feller off the bridge a few years ago. I'm proud to see another hillbilly made it out of the woods, proud to see he isn't above coming back. Good work, Dan. Might see you on the Big Piney, we'll kill us some lunch.