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Give Us a Kiss
Encouraging his fugitive older brother, Smoke, to turn himself in, writer Doyle Redmond becomes involved in his sibling's marijuana-growing operation, which is aided by Smoke's partner, Big Annie and her sensuous daughter, Niagra. Reprint.
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 2, 1996
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1333 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Woodrell
26 books1,338 followersGrowing up in Missouri, seventy miles downriver from Hannibal, Mark Twain was handed to me early on, first or second grade, and captivated me for years, and forever, I reckon. Robert Louis Stevenson had his seasons with me just before my teens and I love him yet. There are too many others to mention, I suppose, but feel compelled to bring up Hemingway, James Agee, Flannery O'Connor, John McGahern, Knut Hamsun, Faulkner, George Mackay Brown, Tillie Olsen, W.S. Merwin, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Andrew Hudgins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Wolco.
Daniel Woodrell was born and now lives in the Missouri Ozarks. He left school and enlisted in the Marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor's degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. Winter's Bone is his eighth novel.
Daniel Woodrell was born and now lives in the Missouri Ozarks. He left school and enlisted in the Marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor's degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. Winter's Bone is his eighth novel.
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January 20, 2021
“How’d you like to find the path to financial security?”
So begins our tale and another selection for the . . . .
Meet Doyle – he’s done left his philandering wife and is going back to his roots in the Ozarks (in the ex’s Volvo, no less).
I always get called a crime writer, though to me they are slice-of-life dramas. They remind me of my family and friends, actually. I hate to think I’ve led a “genre” life, but that seems to be the category I’m boxed in.
In other words, he’s basically Daniel Woodrell.
His brother Smoke is about to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Basically, if Smoke had a favorite song it would be . . . .
Because . . . .
Wacky backy croppin’ might not make ‘em millionaires, but when you live off the land and require very little in the form of creature comforts $15K a piece will make for quite some time of easy living.
In case you are new here, hillbilly noir is most definitely my jam. Winter’s Bone was the library recommendation for this author and I’m so glad I dug a little further into his reserves to find this one. Unlike the title Woodrell has become most known for which is about as black as effing night, Give Us A Kiss was surprisingly light and humorous. And there’s just something about a book that references your own stomping grounds. While the majority takes place in the sticks, the 39th and Rainbow shout out had me like . . . .
Highly recommended to those who are interested in dipping their toes in the cooling waters of the hick lit genre.
So begins our tale and another selection for the . . . .
Meet Doyle – he’s done left his philandering wife and is going back to his roots in the Ozarks (in the ex’s Volvo, no less).
I always get called a crime writer, though to me they are slice-of-life dramas. They remind me of my family and friends, actually. I hate to think I’ve led a “genre” life, but that seems to be the category I’m boxed in.
In other words, he’s basically Daniel Woodrell.
His brother Smoke is about to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Basically, if Smoke had a favorite song it would be . . . .
Because . . . .
Wacky backy croppin’ might not make ‘em millionaires, but when you live off the land and require very little in the form of creature comforts $15K a piece will make for quite some time of easy living.
In case you are new here, hillbilly noir is most definitely my jam. Winter’s Bone was the library recommendation for this author and I’m so glad I dug a little further into his reserves to find this one. Unlike the title Woodrell has become most known for which is about as black as effing night, Give Us A Kiss was surprisingly light and humorous. And there’s just something about a book that references your own stomping grounds. While the majority takes place in the sticks, the 39th and Rainbow shout out had me like . . . .
Highly recommended to those who are interested in dipping their toes in the cooling waters of the hick lit genre.
January 1, 2011
End of the year book report time.
While crowds of people pack themselves into Times Square a couple of miles due west from me I'll give some thoughts on this particular book.
I expected to love this. After Karen's glowing review of Winter's Bone. Instead of being blown away by this book I was just kind of eh about it. I just realized I only gave this three stars while giving the last couple of Crumley books I read four stars. I liked this about as much as the Crumley novels though, but I don't feel like messing with the sanctity of the original star ratings. Actually, there is a lot I like about this book more than the Crumley books. I just keep comparing them in my head because they are both prominently about folks we might off-handely call rednecks, although in both cases I think that the designation is a little weak. I think that in Woodrell's case there is something markedly different from what one would consider a redneck and what an Ozark hillbilly is. Or maybe not markedly, but different in any case.
One thing I like more about this book than the Crumley novels is that this isn't about a detective. It's a crime novel, about people committing crimes. Specifically it's about an obscure writer who goes to try to talk his criminal older brother into turning himself in to the law and instead decides to join him in a scheme to harvest some marijuana and make some dough. What is great about the 'crime' going on is how small time the crime is but who serious and deadly the execution of it is. Not that I ever experienced anyone dying in the small time pot-dealers I knew in my younger days, but the whole atmosphere caught the feeling of white-trash involved in dealing with pot. It's not a high glamor heist or big score going on, but it's worth enough money that to people who are pretty fucking poor it's a pretty big deal.
I would have liked the novel to be grittier. Instead the focus kept falling back on the main character and his lukewarm writing career, which makes sense; I'm fairly sure that the narrator is in some way supposed to be Woodrell. There could have been more given about some of the other characters involved in the pot growing operation. Woodrell did a great job in creating a nineteen year old nymphette who could have easily degraded into a mere object for the author to play out his fantasies of having sex with a young virgin with but instead he created in her a pretty interesting character who dreams of escaping from the hillbilly world she was born into but with dreams for a Hollywood world that she doesn't even realize no longer exists. It reminded me of people I knew growing up in the pre-internet days whose view of the world outside of the almost middle of nowhere town they lived in was a mess of stories, picked up bits of facts, rumors and hearsay that they created a livid but probably unrealistic world out of.
I wanted more from this novel than I was given, but I haven't given up on Woodrell and I will be trying at least another book or two before I give up hope on him.
While crowds of people pack themselves into Times Square a couple of miles due west from me I'll give some thoughts on this particular book.
I expected to love this. After Karen's glowing review of Winter's Bone. Instead of being blown away by this book I was just kind of eh about it. I just realized I only gave this three stars while giving the last couple of Crumley books I read four stars. I liked this about as much as the Crumley novels though, but I don't feel like messing with the sanctity of the original star ratings. Actually, there is a lot I like about this book more than the Crumley books. I just keep comparing them in my head because they are both prominently about folks we might off-handely call rednecks, although in both cases I think that the designation is a little weak. I think that in Woodrell's case there is something markedly different from what one would consider a redneck and what an Ozark hillbilly is. Or maybe not markedly, but different in any case.
One thing I like more about this book than the Crumley novels is that this isn't about a detective. It's a crime novel, about people committing crimes. Specifically it's about an obscure writer who goes to try to talk his criminal older brother into turning himself in to the law and instead decides to join him in a scheme to harvest some marijuana and make some dough. What is great about the 'crime' going on is how small time the crime is but who serious and deadly the execution of it is. Not that I ever experienced anyone dying in the small time pot-dealers I knew in my younger days, but the whole atmosphere caught the feeling of white-trash involved in dealing with pot. It's not a high glamor heist or big score going on, but it's worth enough money that to people who are pretty fucking poor it's a pretty big deal.
I would have liked the novel to be grittier. Instead the focus kept falling back on the main character and his lukewarm writing career, which makes sense; I'm fairly sure that the narrator is in some way supposed to be Woodrell. There could have been more given about some of the other characters involved in the pot growing operation. Woodrell did a great job in creating a nineteen year old nymphette who could have easily degraded into a mere object for the author to play out his fantasies of having sex with a young virgin with but instead he created in her a pretty interesting character who dreams of escaping from the hillbilly world she was born into but with dreams for a Hollywood world that she doesn't even realize no longer exists. It reminded me of people I knew growing up in the pre-internet days whose view of the world outside of the almost middle of nowhere town they lived in was a mess of stories, picked up bits of facts, rumors and hearsay that they created a livid but probably unrealistic world out of.
I wanted more from this novel than I was given, but I haven't given up on Woodrell and I will be trying at least another book or two before I give up hope on him.
August 17, 2023
Niagra, so full of scrumptious hope, is looking at me, there, afraid I won't share her vision. She's afraid I'll tell her that the world won't let her have her dreams realized quite so easily, and probably not at all. That her dream is just a thread of fantasy to hang by for a while, but it'll go limp one horrid night somewhere down life's road and start coiling around her pretty neck. But I don't want to tell her...Because those young dream-years are by far the best years, when you have hardy faith and gallops of energy and go for it all, perhaps in a dumb fashion but with gusto, right up 'til the night the dreams goes limp and starts that coil.
Where were you when the dream went limp?
Daniel Woodrell is probably best known for writing Winter's Bone, source of the movie with Jennifer Lawrence. I read that book over 10 years ago and loved it. The movie captured the plot but not the plain spoken, sometimes gloriously vulgar, often transcendent tone of Woodrell's writing. Reading his prose is like swooning, repeatedly, and wanting to grab a highlighter but you'd highlight damn near the whole book.
This is a story about Doyle Redmond, an Ozark boy from West Table, Missouri, (a stand in for the author's hometown, West Plains, a recurring location in Woodrell's work) A charming shitkicker with a poet's soul, Doyle has tried to make it as a glossy yet earthy literary type and even made it to the Iowa Writer's Workshop but has remained obscure and never quite ditched his shitkicker roots (Doyle, also, shares at least some of his life story with Woodrell.)
So when his marriage hits the skids, he borrows (more or less, probably less) his wife's prize Volvo and heads back east and finds himself on an errand back to West Table to get his older brother Smoke out of trouble. But it turns out neither brother are much invested in that errand and much more invested in a huge marijuana crop Smoke and his girlfriend Big Annie are clandestinely growing in the woods. Doyle is also instantly invested in Big Annie's daughter, Niagra, an otherworldly beauty with an oddball intellect.
Smooching at the Dog'NSuds, my class ring worn on a string around a girl's neck, parents who just didn't understand--I'd never been there. Now here I was, having a sort of teenage love affair, only I was thirty-five years old having it, and hear this clear--it was everything common legend had glossed it up to be, and more.
But full of hidden shoals.
(Hear this clear: the way Woodrell writes is like sunlit honey in your mouth.)
Alas, there is trouble on the wind in this hawthorn and cannabis-scented Ozark paradise: the local bad element know the Redmond brothers are up to something in the woods and have been skulking around looking for any opportunity to make mendacity. And as the money garden continues to ripen, the dread does as well as you wait for bad shit to manifest.
Recurring Woodrell themes of land and family resonate here, not just of those things in the present but the eternal endurance of those things and the celestial destiny that binds you to both. He's also a genius at making you love small time cons. Maybe Doyle and Smoke are lovable because they're the protagonists, but their steadfast commitment to each other and their own brand of mud-and-blood-spattered chivalry make them a pair you can't help but love, as long as they aren't your neighbors.
Do you like grit lit? Are you interested in hillbilly noir? Do you like writing that can turn an anecdote about the dates on pennies into a tragedy of Aristotelian proportions? Then you-YOU!-need Daniel Woodrell in your life.
Where were you when the dream went limp?
Daniel Woodrell is probably best known for writing Winter's Bone, source of the movie with Jennifer Lawrence. I read that book over 10 years ago and loved it. The movie captured the plot but not the plain spoken, sometimes gloriously vulgar, often transcendent tone of Woodrell's writing. Reading his prose is like swooning, repeatedly, and wanting to grab a highlighter but you'd highlight damn near the whole book.
This is a story about Doyle Redmond, an Ozark boy from West Table, Missouri, (a stand in for the author's hometown, West Plains, a recurring location in Woodrell's work) A charming shitkicker with a poet's soul, Doyle has tried to make it as a glossy yet earthy literary type and even made it to the Iowa Writer's Workshop but has remained obscure and never quite ditched his shitkicker roots (Doyle, also, shares at least some of his life story with Woodrell.)
So when his marriage hits the skids, he borrows (more or less, probably less) his wife's prize Volvo and heads back east and finds himself on an errand back to West Table to get his older brother Smoke out of trouble. But it turns out neither brother are much invested in that errand and much more invested in a huge marijuana crop Smoke and his girlfriend Big Annie are clandestinely growing in the woods. Doyle is also instantly invested in Big Annie's daughter, Niagra, an otherworldly beauty with an oddball intellect.
Smooching at the Dog'NSuds, my class ring worn on a string around a girl's neck, parents who just didn't understand--I'd never been there. Now here I was, having a sort of teenage love affair, only I was thirty-five years old having it, and hear this clear--it was everything common legend had glossed it up to be, and more.
But full of hidden shoals.
(Hear this clear: the way Woodrell writes is like sunlit honey in your mouth.)
Alas, there is trouble on the wind in this hawthorn and cannabis-scented Ozark paradise: the local bad element know the Redmond brothers are up to something in the woods and have been skulking around looking for any opportunity to make mendacity. And as the money garden continues to ripen, the dread does as well as you wait for bad shit to manifest.
Recurring Woodrell themes of land and family resonate here, not just of those things in the present but the eternal endurance of those things and the celestial destiny that binds you to both. He's also a genius at making you love small time cons. Maybe Doyle and Smoke are lovable because they're the protagonists, but their steadfast commitment to each other and their own brand of mud-and-blood-spattered chivalry make them a pair you can't help but love, as long as they aren't your neighbors.
Do you like grit lit? Are you interested in hillbilly noir? Do you like writing that can turn an anecdote about the dates on pennies into a tragedy of Aristotelian proportions? Then you-YOU!-need Daniel Woodrell in your life.
June 13, 2016
Woodrell writes some of the most X-treme stories! He pleases me in the way only a Harry Crews or a Larry Brown might. And best of all he knows his sh*t. Nothing worse than Ivy League authors phony details about weapons or drugs or sex in lesser books. I've seen those flaws a thousand times by others, but never by Woodrell!! This entertained so well, I read it in one day!
August 9, 2016
Ugh, Daniel Woodrell, what the hell have you been smoking? Up until now, I've adored everything of his I've read but found this amateurish. Granted, I only got about 40% in when he launched into what read like an excerpt from Playboy magazine. I'm fine with literary liaisons, really, and the foul scenes in "A Feast of Snakes" that had many people closing the book were actually okay by me - yes, I winced and squinched while reading them, but they served a purpose in showing how sad and desperate the main character, Joe Lon was. This, though? Tongue and bush are too stupid a couple of words for me to read, but then it got even more dumb: "My tongue employed the strokes of Picasso." Daniel, are you, like, 19 years old and high?
Despite the sophomoric sex scenes, the language is believable, rough guy country noir with the occasional smattering of words like "verisimilitude" - obesely inflated words to prove that he is not as ignorant as he mostly sounds. Yes, I understand that his protagonist is a crime writer from a hard scrabble background who is struggling to write outside of his genre - metafiction? I don't think so because Woodrell is not writing outside his genre with this book. Maybe he has never helped his older brother tend and harvest a patch of pot, but the novel is skanky country noir.
Long story short, DNF! So disappointed. Woe.
Despite the sophomoric sex scenes, the language is believable, rough guy country noir with the occasional smattering of words like "verisimilitude" - obesely inflated words to prove that he is not as ignorant as he mostly sounds. Yes, I understand that his protagonist is a crime writer from a hard scrabble background who is struggling to write outside of his genre - metafiction? I don't think so because Woodrell is not writing outside his genre with this book. Maybe he has never helped his older brother tend and harvest a patch of pot, but the novel is skanky country noir.
Long story short, DNF! So disappointed. Woe.
November 29, 2012
I've made it extremely clear over the years that I love love love plain speech in first-person narratives and dialogue. I love regional speech, vernacular, local color. It makes the writing so much more meaningful, so much more real and true. So I thought I was going to find another master of that style, like Joe R Lansdale, in Daniel Woodrell. Unfortunately, I wasn't all that smitten by what turned out to be a pretty self-indulgent love letter to himself.
This probably shouldn't have been the first Woodrell book I decided to read. This just cannot be the man everyone is always fussing over, the person they say that Donald Ray Pollock's writing resembles. Because this book didn't have a clue what it wanted to be- hardboiled Mickey Spillane or goofy as hell Elmore Leonard.
'Give Us a Kiss' was suffering from a serious split in personality. This felt like one of those posthumous Westlake novels published by Hard Case after he passed. Something Woodrell was toying around with for a while but just couldn't quite flesh out or pin down. I'd give this more room to breathe had it been a debut novel, but that's not the case.
Sometimes serious and grave, often humorous to the point of being slapstick, I just couldn't get a handle on what the author really wanted to tell us. The story is pat- you see the exact ending coming a mile off. The dialogue is just okay, nothing special. Which is what bothered me the most.
I grew up around country folks, colorful as all hell, that left rural Tennessee in the 70's and migrated north to Chicago for what they thought were better things. And it just bothered me no end that although I knew the characters in this book from experience, try felt flat and lifeless and without all the color and quick wit and turns of phrase that comes from the region.
Honestly, 'Tomato Red' is next on my list, and I'll be starting it next week. I'm not giving up. I was just expecting one whole hell of a lot more.
Grade: C-
This probably shouldn't have been the first Woodrell book I decided to read. This just cannot be the man everyone is always fussing over, the person they say that Donald Ray Pollock's writing resembles. Because this book didn't have a clue what it wanted to be- hardboiled Mickey Spillane or goofy as hell Elmore Leonard.
'Give Us a Kiss' was suffering from a serious split in personality. This felt like one of those posthumous Westlake novels published by Hard Case after he passed. Something Woodrell was toying around with for a while but just couldn't quite flesh out or pin down. I'd give this more room to breathe had it been a debut novel, but that's not the case.
Sometimes serious and grave, often humorous to the point of being slapstick, I just couldn't get a handle on what the author really wanted to tell us. The story is pat- you see the exact ending coming a mile off. The dialogue is just okay, nothing special. Which is what bothered me the most.
I grew up around country folks, colorful as all hell, that left rural Tennessee in the 70's and migrated north to Chicago for what they thought were better things. And it just bothered me no end that although I knew the characters in this book from experience, try felt flat and lifeless and without all the color and quick wit and turns of phrase that comes from the region.
Honestly, 'Tomato Red' is next on my list, and I'll be starting it next week. I'm not giving up. I was just expecting one whole hell of a lot more.
Grade: C-
July 22, 2014
I read Give Us a Kiss maybe four, five years ago and never got around to a review. A few weeks back I listened to the audiobook version on ten hour drives back and forth from Wisconsin to western New York. I'm glad I did. While I struggled with the narrator's vocalization of female characters (he sounded like a heterosexual guy pretending to be a drag queen), this novel was perfect road trip fodder.
In Give Us a Kiss Woodrell grabs cliches and shakes the living shit out of them. He owns the Ozark boilerplates. It's like someone dared him to "write what you know" and he said, "ok, motherfucker, these are my people." He writes with fierce pride and humor. If southern noir exists, and I think it does, Woodrell dares you to discount his place. He probably doesn't look like much, on the surface, but he'll write circles around contenders. And Give Us a Kiss is Woodrell at his most fun and uninhibited. The novel strains reality, maybe, especially toward the end, but the skewering of academic writing programs and his go-for-broke approach render those concerns non-starters. Give Us a Kiss is a blast along the lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Confederacy of Dunces maybe crossed with Justified. I can't give much higher praise for a book that held my attention for hours across the Ohio and Indiana turnpikes. Great read. Great listen.
In Give Us a Kiss Woodrell grabs cliches and shakes the living shit out of them. He owns the Ozark boilerplates. It's like someone dared him to "write what you know" and he said, "ok, motherfucker, these are my people." He writes with fierce pride and humor. If southern noir exists, and I think it does, Woodrell dares you to discount his place. He probably doesn't look like much, on the surface, but he'll write circles around contenders. And Give Us a Kiss is Woodrell at his most fun and uninhibited. The novel strains reality, maybe, especially toward the end, but the skewering of academic writing programs and his go-for-broke approach render those concerns non-starters. Give Us a Kiss is a blast along the lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Confederacy of Dunces maybe crossed with Justified. I can't give much higher praise for a book that held my attention for hours across the Ohio and Indiana turnpikes. Great read. Great listen.
August 30, 2009
A great read. This is the first book I've read by Woodrell, but I'm definitely going to run out and find a few more. He stakes claim to the Ozarks with force and in my mind, when it comes to crime fiction, he now owns them.
While I enjoy crime novels set in cities, it is a rare treat to read a novel set in a rural setting that is both authentic and well-written. A novel that doesn't slum, but embraces the inhabitants of the small town.
This book made me almost glad that I caught a head cold, as it gave me the opportunity to read something really good in practically one sitting.
While I enjoy crime novels set in cities, it is a rare treat to read a novel set in a rural setting that is both authentic and well-written. A novel that doesn't slum, but embraces the inhabitants of the small town.
This book made me almost glad that I caught a head cold, as it gave me the opportunity to read something really good in practically one sitting.
June 2, 2012
My dear pal Al just sent me this book, and I read it from cover to cover in a single day. It's a quick, easy read--really short chapters help create a quick pace, and also add to the tension and suspense. The novel follows a writer, Doyle, on his journey back home to the Ozarks. He's been sent to find his brother, who's on the lam, and he's driving a car that has technically been stolen. So trouble quickly ensues. The book is narrated in the first person, and I absolutely love the narrative voice. As a writer, Doyle has a unique understanding of voices in one's head and of symbolism, giving the novel a kind of metafiction. Doyle knows what signs he should pay attention to--he knows when shit gets ominous. There's also a great tension in his voice based on his two worlds--he grew up what he describes as the rough-and-tumble backwoods of the Ozarks, but then went onto college, and to graduate school in Iowa and a career as a writer/academic. Doyle has an awareness of both worlds, and knows how to speak both languages. There's a kind of redneck/backwoods grammar to the way Doyle narrates. Woodrell also does a great job with plot--he paces the novel well, and uses word choice wisely to build suspense. One chapter begins: "Smoke took them down with a machete"--them refers to marijuana plants, but we know bigger trouble is building, so for a split second, we we wonder if it might be not a plant. Woodrell's clearly a writer with great control. My only qualm is with the ending--it's certainly inevitable, and something of a surprise. But it also seems a little too neat, considering all of the troubles that bring Doyle to the end.
March 1, 2010
A lighter more humorous book from Woodrell. This ends with a comic touch rather than tragic. I think this suffers in comparison Death of Sweet Mister and Woe to Live On (which are also quite funny) though the construction is just as good. But you can’t put up that much darkness every time so here is to writing with nuance and variety. A tale of family and criminality and I think the main character is Woodrell poking a little fun at himself.
November 23, 2021
I'm pretty sure this is the 2nd time I've "reviewed" a Daniel Woodrell novel my calling it Cormac McCarthy for young adults.
I didn't believe any of the characters, the plot was ridiculous and the ending was laughably bad. It was an easy read though.
I didn't believe any of the characters, the plot was ridiculous and the ending was laughably bad. It was an easy read though.
May 18, 2022
I’m very big on Woodrell, and having read everything by him, this was the last of his southern noir’s. He does seem to split opinion more than most, but for me, when he is at his best, he is right up there with the great southern writers. I refer particularly to The Death of Sweet Mister in which, in Red Atkins, he describes one of the most evil characters in a genre that has plenty of them.
But this is his weakest novel. He began his writing with the Rene Shade novels, The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do, which are more crime noir writing. Almost ten years after those, this is the second of his books trying to shrug off the genre tag he had been labelled with. But his best was to come.
Doyle Redmond, a 35 year old writer, has maintained through the years ``a crippling allegiance to his roots.'' - the dark, semi-lawless, hillbilly Ozark mountains of the Arkansas-Missouri border. So Doyle returns home from California at the request of his parents, to find his brother, Smoke, and sort various matters of the law out.
I think it’s a case of Woodrell learning the ropes of the tough guy fiction. It’s reminiscent of Jim Harrison, but he doesn’t quite have the balance right. The Redmonds are far from being stricken by poverty, the dialogue isn’t as convincing as it is in his later work.
It entertains well enough, but doesn’t stand up next to Sweet Mister or Winter's Bone.
But this is his weakest novel. He began his writing with the Rene Shade novels, The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do, which are more crime noir writing. Almost ten years after those, this is the second of his books trying to shrug off the genre tag he had been labelled with. But his best was to come.
Doyle Redmond, a 35 year old writer, has maintained through the years ``a crippling allegiance to his roots.'' - the dark, semi-lawless, hillbilly Ozark mountains of the Arkansas-Missouri border. So Doyle returns home from California at the request of his parents, to find his brother, Smoke, and sort various matters of the law out.
I think it’s a case of Woodrell learning the ropes of the tough guy fiction. It’s reminiscent of Jim Harrison, but he doesn’t quite have the balance right. The Redmonds are far from being stricken by poverty, the dialogue isn’t as convincing as it is in his later work.
It entertains well enough, but doesn’t stand up next to Sweet Mister or Winter's Bone.
March 30, 2011
DanielWoodrell is a hell of a writer. I came across his work when the film “Winter’s Bone” was released and he was identified as the author of the book on which it is based. E. Annie Proulx blurbed on this earlier book, describing Woodrell as a “Ladystinger of a writer”. A ladystinger as his readers will discover is a 32 revolver. In “Give Me A Kiss” the protagonist Doyle seems semi-autobiographical; an Ozark boy who attained a college education and has become a published but largely unread writer except among readers of literary journals. Doyle forsakes his former wife and life to return to his Ozark roots seeking his older brother Smoke. He falls into a wacky tobaccy enterprise with Smoke, his girlfriend Big Annie and her daughter Niagra that involves murder, a rival hillbilly tribe and much more, all vividly described and concluding most satisfactorily. Winter’s Bone brought Woodrell popular attention which will resonate to his earlier books as well.
October 17, 2016
“Then the screen door slammed, and out came this vision of hillbillyette beauty. She held a pistol in her hand in a fairly neighborly and utterly charming fashion. Her long hair was a perfect champagne blond, and she had cut-off jeans on and a t-shirt that said COUNTRY BEAVER AND THE RHYTHM DRIFTERS. Sunglasses with a white frame hid her eyes. Her red cowgirl boots went up her bare legs like flame licks from hell.”
“Then I sighted in on the Dolly and emptied the ladystinger into his back, li'l plumes of blood splashing up in the kind of li'l splashes pennies make when tossed into a wishing well. 'There's your mercy, girl.”
“Then I sighted in on the Dolly and emptied the ladystinger into his back, li'l plumes of blood splashing up in the kind of li'l splashes pennies make when tossed into a wishing well. 'There's your mercy, girl.”
May 4, 2022
I'm normally a fan of Daniel Woodrell, but "Give Us a Kiss" is a real turd. I'm glad it wasn't my first exposure to him, because I probably wouldn't have given him another chance and would have missed out on great books like "Woe to Live On" or "Winter's Bone"
Woodrell's books all take place in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri and deal with the kinds of rural people who don't normally appear in books. His other books do a fairly good job of painting gritty, but realistic picture of life "Give Us a Kiss" is cartoonish in its portrayal of hillbilly criminals. The dialogue is completely unbelievable.
The main character is a writer who is too cool for the squares of the literary world. He's hard drinking and cool in the face of danger. Oh and women can't help but fall for him. It gives the whole book the feel of an extended Penthouse magazine letter to the editor.
Skip this. And if you did read it go read another of his books. I had to go check his bibliography because I assumed something this bad was a first book, but no he wrote great stuff before and great stuff after. There's got to be a good story behind how and why this ever saw the light of day.
Woodrell's books all take place in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri and deal with the kinds of rural people who don't normally appear in books. His other books do a fairly good job of painting gritty, but realistic picture of life "Give Us a Kiss" is cartoonish in its portrayal of hillbilly criminals. The dialogue is completely unbelievable.
The main character is a writer who is too cool for the squares of the literary world. He's hard drinking and cool in the face of danger. Oh and women can't help but fall for him. It gives the whole book the feel of an extended Penthouse magazine letter to the editor.
Skip this. And if you did read it go read another of his books. I had to go check his bibliography because I assumed something this bad was a first book, but no he wrote great stuff before and great stuff after. There's got to be a good story behind how and why this ever saw the light of day.
September 19, 2012
this will be the...5th or 6th from woodrell for me...kindle.
begins w/a quote from marilyn monroe: all we demanded was our right to twinkle.
and before that, 'this novel is dedicated to three ladies whose support made it happen" marian wood, ellen levine, and deborah sweet
"and to the memory of my father robert lee woodrell"
and then there/s this from his jazzy eulogy
and he saieth, "let the trumpets and the saxophones swing, man, swing!"
and grandfather pedro (peed-drow) daily "now, if a fella only knew..."
--from his lips, many times
has a foreward by pinckney benedict
sounds like this pinckney character also grew up among hillbillies, these in the mountains of southern western virginia...goes into the story a bit...delivers a new term, for me anyway, a mountain william...uncle hunter, who didn't want to be called a hillbilly, having been to college...description fits the novel's protagonist, doyle redmond...claims the folk there in the hills have an obsession with the past...mentions another name of pancake...breece d'j pancake...a story, "trilobites"...this pancake character is the patron saint of modern hillbilly fiction...
story begins"
1 three finger jerks
i had a family errand to run, that's all, but i decided to take a pistol. it was just a little black thirty-two ladystinger and i tucked it into the blue pillowcase that held my traveling clothes....
onward & upward
update, finished, 20 sep 12, thursday 3:15 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah, so i'm done with this one...can't help but wonder what all those long-dead holy guys of literature and art would think of this one...matthew arnold...wasn't he the one with the touchstone? or how about some of those other major statements...eliot...aristotle...plato...henry james maybe?...dryden? all the big yay=hoos...
...cause well, doyle, he acts like a papal-granting pope...indulgences...this story provides indulgences to those who have not had indulgences prior. almost like the establishment media, playing anal tongue darts w/fearless leader, barack "buster" obama...and well, so it goes, right?
this one is not as poetic as tomato red or winter's bone...and perhaps it is earlier in the folio? does woodrell have a folio? what, exactly, is a folio? shakespeare has one...the touchstone...and...have to pause here to reflect, to try to remember if willy has any stories like this one...and, surely he must...
...revenge...big big...blood...heh! niagra...she names her dog damned spot! so...there exists a lineage...begats going back to willy's time.
anyway...good story...imaru?
begins w/a quote from marilyn monroe: all we demanded was our right to twinkle.
and before that, 'this novel is dedicated to three ladies whose support made it happen" marian wood, ellen levine, and deborah sweet
"and to the memory of my father robert lee woodrell"
and then there/s this from his jazzy eulogy
and he saieth, "let the trumpets and the saxophones swing, man, swing!"
and grandfather pedro (peed-drow) daily "now, if a fella only knew..."
--from his lips, many times
has a foreward by pinckney benedict
sounds like this pinckney character also grew up among hillbillies, these in the mountains of southern western virginia...goes into the story a bit...delivers a new term, for me anyway, a mountain william...uncle hunter, who didn't want to be called a hillbilly, having been to college...description fits the novel's protagonist, doyle redmond...claims the folk there in the hills have an obsession with the past...mentions another name of pancake...breece d'j pancake...a story, "trilobites"...this pancake character is the patron saint of modern hillbilly fiction...
story begins"
1 three finger jerks
i had a family errand to run, that's all, but i decided to take a pistol. it was just a little black thirty-two ladystinger and i tucked it into the blue pillowcase that held my traveling clothes....
onward & upward
update, finished, 20 sep 12, thursday 3:15 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah, so i'm done with this one...can't help but wonder what all those long-dead holy guys of literature and art would think of this one...matthew arnold...wasn't he the one with the touchstone? or how about some of those other major statements...eliot...aristotle...plato...henry james maybe?...dryden? all the big yay=hoos...
...cause well, doyle, he acts like a papal-granting pope...indulgences...this story provides indulgences to those who have not had indulgences prior. almost like the establishment media, playing anal tongue darts w/fearless leader, barack "buster" obama...and well, so it goes, right?
this one is not as poetic as tomato red or winter's bone...and perhaps it is earlier in the folio? does woodrell have a folio? what, exactly, is a folio? shakespeare has one...the touchstone...and...have to pause here to reflect, to try to remember if willy has any stories like this one...and, surely he must...
...revenge...big big...blood...heh! niagra...she names her dog damned spot! so...there exists a lineage...begats going back to willy's time.
anyway...good story...imaru?
July 7, 2020
I pretty much read this book and Woodrell's The Death of Sweet Mister back to back. Give Us a Kiss was so much less of a downer and really quite amusing. I guess Woodrell was trying to "one-up" his Missouri hillbillies vs their counterparts in KY and TN. The story takes place in Howl Co. in southern Missouri (Woodrell's home turf). In this short novel the reader will be exposed to Lucky Strikes, Johnny Walker Red (ugh), Stag Beer, the Git 'N Quick, cow chip golf, Country Beaver and the Rythmn Drifters(?), catfish noodling, Razorback Red from the money garden, the Rocky Drop and more including a trailer attached to an A-frame. If you already know this stuff "then you might be a redneck." Our cast of characters include General Joe and Mom, the brothers Doyle and Smoke, Grandpa Panda, Sheriff Lilley, members of the Dolly clan (they reappear in Winter's Bone) and my personal favorites, the mother and daughter team of Big Annie and Niagra (Mom couldn't spell Niagara for the birth certificate). There's even a flea ravaged mutt named Damned Spot, right out of MacBeth. Woodrell's theme is alleged to be "generational criminality." Each new generation of the Redmond clan is born to be bad, it's in their genes and it cannot be helped. Old man Grandpa Panda, a convicted felon, has got himself a closet full of guns and ammo under the stairs of the ol homestead. Ready for feuding. Yes, there is some bad stuff that goes on and people even get killed. Oh well, who cares about a Dolly but another Dolly? In my view the story is about the beauty and the sensuousness of the country girl, Niagra, and her equally impressive mama, Big Annie. I do believe that Niagra was modeled after Daisey Mae of Little Abner comic/cartoon fame. Much more than a sailor's dream. Big Annie? Well, Big Annie was not big in the sense of being XL, she was buxom. Big Annie also possessed a sweet disposition which made her very likable. I found the book to be fun and funny. It is well written and enjoyable. Gotta love those country sirens. They stole the show. "All we demanded was our right to twinkle." I almost gave the book 5 stars but thought it would be too hard to explain.
January 4, 2011
Published in 1996, Give us a Kiss was Daniel Woodrell's fifth novel, and his first (I believe) to take place in and around the Missouri Ozarks. Like Tomato Red, the first person voice really drives this loosely semi-autobiographical novel. The narrator, Doyle, is a writer (whose life and past resembles that of Woodrell) who has written a few crime novels and has come back from living in California. His parents, who live in Kansas City but are from the fictional town of West Plain, Missouri (a stand in for Woodrell's hometown of West Table, deep in the Ozarks), send him to the Ozarks to track down his brother, Smoke, who is on the lam and hiding out from the law in KC. Doyle willingly gets caught up with Smoke in a big drug deal, a large money crop of marijuana, the proceeds of which Doyle plans to use to finance his next novel, as well as longstanding feud with another family, the Dolly's (who turn up in Woodrell's excellent novel, Winter's Bone). As the subtitle suggests, this is very much a "country noir," so you can probably guess what sorts of things happen as the plot unfolds.
If I had to rank this alongside the other Woodrell novel's I've read, it falls slightly below Tomato Red, which is below Winter's Bone. With that said, it was an entertaining, quick read, full of the great language and characters I've come to expect from Woodrell. While Give us a Kiss doesn't stand up to the brilliance of Winter's Bone, it was interesting to see where Woodrell has come from as a writer and how his style has developed, particularly as it pertains to writing about the Ozarks.
For more, see my blog: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
If I had to rank this alongside the other Woodrell novel's I've read, it falls slightly below Tomato Red, which is below Winter's Bone. With that said, it was an entertaining, quick read, full of the great language and characters I've come to expect from Woodrell. While Give us a Kiss doesn't stand up to the brilliance of Winter's Bone, it was interesting to see where Woodrell has come from as a writer and how his style has developed, particularly as it pertains to writing about the Ozarks.
For more, see my blog: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/
May 30, 2007
I so enjoyed Winter's Bone (see review here), that I set out to read another Woodrell forthwith. In Give Us A Kiss: A Country Noir, Doyle Redmond, a published but unknown author, leaves California in a Volvo stolen from his unfaithful wife, to return to his native Missouri. He sees his parents who dispatch him to find his brother, Smoke, and to convince him to turn himself in on outstanding arrest warrants in Kansas City. Doyle finds Smoke deep in the woods near their hometown of West Table, in the Missouri Ozarks along the Arkansas border, cultivating a cash crop of marijuana. Needing money to finish his next novel, Doyle pitches in on tending and harvesting the crop, a dangerous job due to a long-standing feud between the Redmonds and another hillbilly family. The perhaps autobiographical Give Us a Kiss is both more country and more noir than Winter's Bone. Woodrell's use of language is rougher and the plot is grittier and bloodier. But, I am more convinced after reading Give Us A Kiss, that Woodrell is doing something unlike any other current author in telling heretofore untold tales of the harsh realities of life in contemporary rural America. Brilliant, albeit disturbing.
February 11, 2013
I love Daniel Woodrell's writing! His "hillbillies behaving badly" stories really strike a cord with me. Woodrell loves the Ozarks, "Ozark mountains seem to hunker instead of tower, and they are plenty rugged but without much of the majestic left in them". His characters are hard living, hard drinking, tough and independent. They don't have much use for rules or the law. But family is everything. If you are kin you can always rely on family to help you out. And as Doyle, the university educated character in the story says, "Eventually I became who I am, a somewhat educated hillbilly who keeps his diction stunted down out of crippling allegiance to his roots".
In this book the Redmonds and the Dollys both live a ways down the road from bad and well round the corner from honest. They have a long standing rivalry with each other. Like many hillbillies they have switched from brewing moonshine to cooking meth and growing dope. That's where need and greed cross paths and trouble ensues. If this is your sort of story, this is a fabulous book!
In this book the Redmonds and the Dollys both live a ways down the road from bad and well round the corner from honest. They have a long standing rivalry with each other. Like many hillbillies they have switched from brewing moonshine to cooking meth and growing dope. That's where need and greed cross paths and trouble ensues. If this is your sort of story, this is a fabulous book!
November 12, 2012
My first exposure to Woodrell was Tomato Red, which quite possibly has the best opening paragraph to any book I've ever read. This set the tone for my expectations with Woodrll and Give Us a Kiss is written along those same lines, but is certain a better overall read.
Set in the Ozarks, Doyle Redmond goes home to see his folks and then is sent on a task to find his brother, a dope growing local criminal with an affinity for danger and loose women. Doyle is in the middle of a divorce and trying to figure out the plot/material for his next book (he made it out of his Ozark town to be come a writer).
Upon his return to his old stomping ground, he finds that while things have changed, most people he knows have not...including his brother.
For those who have dig white trash heroes, undying familial loyalty, and the seedier side of life, I highly recommend Give Us a Kiss. I find it hard to believe that Woodrell will ever top this book, but I already have a copy of another one of his coming my way.
Set in the Ozarks, Doyle Redmond goes home to see his folks and then is sent on a task to find his brother, a dope growing local criminal with an affinity for danger and loose women. Doyle is in the middle of a divorce and trying to figure out the plot/material for his next book (he made it out of his Ozark town to be come a writer).
Upon his return to his old stomping ground, he finds that while things have changed, most people he knows have not...including his brother.
For those who have dig white trash heroes, undying familial loyalty, and the seedier side of life, I highly recommend Give Us a Kiss. I find it hard to believe that Woodrell will ever top this book, but I already have a copy of another one of his coming my way.
September 26, 2015
Given what I know (not a lot) and what I think I know, this story reads like it's filled with factionalized versions of some of Woodrell's life experiences. Doyle Redmond, a crime writer, returns to the Ozarks, talked into helping with a pot crop, kills a member of a family long the enemy of the Redmonds, and falls in love with the teenage daughter of his brothers girlfriend.
Written as a kind of wild a wooly tall tale told to drunken friends it's hard to take seriously. It has one of the most original obligatory sex scenes that I ever recall reading. If Woodrell wasn't such a damn good writer you could brush this tale off, but it's just too good. If you've ever read the whole of Charles Williams, you've read some of the best comic crime books written. This book ranks with them.
Written as a kind of wild a wooly tall tale told to drunken friends it's hard to take seriously. It has one of the most original obligatory sex scenes that I ever recall reading. If Woodrell wasn't such a damn good writer you could brush this tale off, but it's just too good. If you've ever read the whole of Charles Williams, you've read some of the best comic crime books written. This book ranks with them.
September 7, 2016
A wonderful hillbilly story, that takes place in the lower Ozarks, is Missouri. You have drugs, various forms of senseless as well as valid violence. White trash women, excessive drinking, and mild sex. What more could you want in a book?
The story is about Doyle, whose marriage has fallen apart in California, so he steals his wife's car and heads back to where he grew up. His parents ask him to find his older brother Smoke, and to try and convince Smoke to turn himself in, as he is a wanted man. Doyle finds Smoke, finds out Smoke is about to harvest a huge crop of pot, and he decides to join Smoke in this endeavor. Unfortunately the Dolly family is also interested in their crop. The Dolly's are pure white trash, hillbillies, and this is when the shit hits the fan.
This was a very fun book to read.
The story is about Doyle, whose marriage has fallen apart in California, so he steals his wife's car and heads back to where he grew up. His parents ask him to find his older brother Smoke, and to try and convince Smoke to turn himself in, as he is a wanted man. Doyle finds Smoke, finds out Smoke is about to harvest a huge crop of pot, and he decides to join Smoke in this endeavor. Unfortunately the Dolly family is also interested in their crop. The Dolly's are pure white trash, hillbillies, and this is when the shit hits the fan.
This was a very fun book to read.
December 21, 2010
This reminded me of Barry Gifford novels where the plot’s almost secondary to the quirky characters and their even quirkier anecdotes. These little tales kept interrupting the story in an A.D.D. mode, like the writer had trouble focusing on his story. “Give Us A Kiss” is a sort of modern Hatfields versus McCoys tale about kinfolk feudin’ over a mighty powerful merrywanna crop. I found the idea of folks killing each other over weed ridiculous until I read in the paper that “medical” marijuana shops in Hollywood have been experiencing shootouts and robberies.
BTW, in the book the hillbillies wear football team tees and the younger ones don’t wear a “Judas Priest” or “Misfits” tee, a sure sign that the author is an old fart who doesn’t acknowledge WT metal fandom.
BTW, in the book the hillbillies wear football team tees and the younger ones don’t wear a “Judas Priest” or “Misfits” tee, a sure sign that the author is an old fart who doesn’t acknowledge WT metal fandom.
February 27, 2012
Another great country noir by Woodrell. He builds the suspense and has you rooting for the characters whether you like them or not. Although his depiction of the Ozarks shows only a portion of it, that is a seedy underside of the population a reader hopes to only ever experience on the page. Woodrell's rich descriptions capture a colorful cultural history here, some of which is still lived in this region. You can experience the indulgence and danger vicariously though his wild tales, as he does a great job at describing them.
June 7, 2016
Every Missourian ought to be required to read a Woodrell. I've read most of his "Ozarks noir" novels and never been let down; it's hard to pick the best. I will say that this one, with all of the usual elements (a detailed picture of the West Plains area, dialogue a Missourian will recognize, a grappling with adulthood and family heritage, total command of the narrative), is the funniest and pithiest. If you don't know who Woodrell is, fix that, but--he wrote WINTER'S BONE. Not the best of the lot, actually....
February 9, 2014
The most autobiographical novel yet of Woodrell, almost like Doyle is he. The story moves quickly and gets the Ozark mentality and history down to the language and the mindset of the characters. The old grandpa is great. This book has a lot of sex, drug use and violence, but the dialogue is sharp and the hardboiled characters a bit like true crime. Not the best Woodrell, but he's better than most on his worst day. Woth reading.
December 31, 2019
I'm a huge fan of gothic Ozark noir. I've loved previous books by this author and this one fell a little flat. The characters didn't have the same lovingly flawed personna. The narrator I just couldn't like as well. Woodrell does so well with his gritty books that his one is just as it should be. If you're a Woodrell fan, pass on this one.
October 15, 2012
Damn that was a good book!
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