El diablo a todas horas

by Donald Ray Pollock

Una historia no apta para almas sensibles que retrata la cara más fanática, sórdida y violenta de Estados Unidos. El gótico norteamericano se suma al noir más brutal y crudo.

La novela en que se basa la nueva película de NETFLIX, El diablo a todas horas, protagonizada por Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Bill Skarsgård y Tom Holland.

En un lugar perdido de Ohio, el veterano de guerra Willard Russell asiste impotente a la inevitable muerte de su mujer. Ni su fe acérrima ni los sacrificios sanguinarios que realiza junto a su hijo Arvin en un improvisado altar en pleno bosque parecen ganarle la partida al cáncer. A lo largo de dos décadas, desde la resaca posbélica de los años cincuenta hasta los esperanzadores sesenta, Arvin crece marcado por la violencia a la búsqueda de su propia versión de la justicia. Otros personajes siniestros -predicadores enfebrecidos y libidinosos, un sheriff corrompido o una extravagante pareja de asesinos en serie que conduce por las carreteras norteamericanas a la caza de sus víctimas- comparten con él este infecto agujero.

En esta aclamada obra, la crudeza de la novela negra más descarnada se suma a la imaginería del gótico norteamericano. Donald Ray Pollock, una de las firmas más perturbadoras y talentosas de los últimos tiempos, indaga en la depravación y la redención de unos personajes al límite que viven en un mundo bendecido por el mismísimo diablo.

La crítica ha dicho...
«Violento, inquietante, perverso, desgarrador y muy bueno. Puede que sientas rechazo, puede que te impacte y es casi seguro que te horrorizará, pero leerás hasta la última palabra.»
The Washington Post

«El diablo a todas horas es una tremenda novela. De lo mejor que he leído nunca. [...] dureza, compasión, redención, belleza, violencia, una trama adictiva y trenzada con tino, algo de humor (negro, calcinado humor), personajes inolvidables, aventuras dañinas, humanos extravagantes (pero creíbles), códigos de honor, locura y obsesión, fanatismo, sangre fácil y el Sur.»
Kiko Amat

«Una propuesta literaria de calado, una visión demoledoramente crítica del American way of life, capaz de remover las tripas del más pintado.»
Xavi Ayén, La Vanguardia

«El sentido del ritmo, la contundencia de su prosa, su brutal sentido del humor y la determinación casi profética que impulsa cada página se nos imponen. Pollock remueve el caldo séptico del Mal con una seriedad admirable, mostrando la violencia en estallidos que merecerían ser versículos traducidos por un laico. [...] La traducción de Javier Calvo, por cierto, es prodigiosa. »
Nadal Suau, El Cultural

«El gran logro de Pollock está en acercarse a esa oscura y sórdida realidad con tremendo humor y agilidad para intentar retratar el momento exacto en el que la vida de sus personajes empieza a irse definitivamente al carajo.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Crime, Southern Gothic, Mystery

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 12, 2011

About the author

Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff. He dropped out of high school at seventeen to work in a meatpacking plant, and then spent thirty-two years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. He graduated from the MFA program at Ohio State University in 2009, and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy. His first book, Knockemstiff, won the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Third Coast, The Journal, Sou’wester, Chiron Review, River Styx, Boulevard, Folio, Granta, NYTBR, Washington Square, and The Berkeley Fiction Review. The Devil All the Time is his first novel.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh, great. another book i can never recommend to elizabeth...

this book is vicious. understand that. this is a hyper-violent book, filled with completely unsavory characters in a filthy landscape where crimes are committed with breathtaking casualness.

and i gotta confess, i loved it.

because that's not all it is. this isn't just gratuitous violence for shock value and testing of the reader's limits. there is also that heartbreaking thing i love so much in my literature: small-town desperation. the frustration of limitations. the recognition of boundaries, and working within them to steal a little pleasure for yourself, even if your sickfuck version of pleasure is orchestrating murder-victim photographic tableaux or seeing how many little girls you can deflower or daydreaming your pathetically small-frame dreams:

sometime soon, he was going to drive down to the river city and see a doubleheader. his plan was to buy a good seat, drink beer, stuff himself with their hot dogs. he's heard hot dogs tasted better in a ballpark, and he wanted to find out for himself. cincinnati was just ninety miles or so on the other side of the mitchell flats, a straight shot down route 50, but he's never been there, hadn't been any further west than hillsboro his entire twenty-two years.hank had the feeling that his life would really begin once he made that trip.

god, that kills me. that eating a hot dog in a ballpark would be this big life-changing experience; the apex of his imagination. right in my feeling-parts, that.

okay, are you suitably saddened and soft? because now we have to talk about the rest of the book. the part with the murder and the rape and the animal sacrifice and the prostitution and the suicide and all that other stuff. because as much as you can sympathize with people wanting to escape their narrow lives and make their mark on the world, this is what winesberg, ohio would become if eli roth got his hands on it.

and people are going to die.

they will die as misguided attempts to attract the attention of god, or to prove that resurrection of the human body is possible (spoiler alert - it is not), thrill-killings masquerading as art, killing as self-defense, severe beatings as justice: this is a terrifying little slice-of-life.

and yet - it is still so fucking beautiful.

recalling a long-deceased love:

alice louise berry had died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, along with 3 million or so poor souls, just a few weeks after starting her classes at the gilmore sanderson secretarial school. if only they had stayed in the hills, earskell often thought, she might still be alive. but alice always had big dreams, which was one of the things he had loved about her, and he was glad that he hadn't tried to talk her out of it. he was certain those days they spent in cincinnati among the tall buildings and crowded streets before she took the fever were the happiest ones of her life. his too, for that matter.

ahhhhh - again with the feeling-parts!

that's what this book is like - a constant shift between beauty and brutality. and his control of the two elements is masterful. this has definitely earned its place in my personal canon of appalachia lit that gives me a heart-on, and as soon as i can find my copy of knockemstiff, i am all over that like blood on prayer-log.

come to my blog!

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE

Well, finally the movie arrived (on Netflix) and it's.... just about adequate. Yeah, that good. I mean, everything is in place, kind of, (aside from Mr Robert Pattison, how did he get in there with his weird accent) but like the movie Trainspotting it's sooooo watered-down. Bookreaders will know this feeling. I note that Donald Ray Pollock himself is the narrator in this movie version (and he has a great voice) so he must have liked it but for me, naaah. Read the damn book, it's great.

And now back to the original review.


***********

There’s chick lit



Dick lit


Mick lit


Flick lit


Trick lit


Sick lit


Quick lit


And now

Hick lit!

Well, yes, an affectionate term which I learned from one of the various great reviews of this novel on Goodreads, which probably doesn’t need another rave review, you all got the message now that Donald Ray Pollock is the real deal by now, but I feel compelled to tell you again.

Because I’ve not been having such a great time with novels recently. A kind of chill has settled over our relationship. Neither of us wants to be the one to say anything. But many times I avoid looking my shelf-of-unread-novels in the eye. I think about the golden days when we were discovering something new about each other it seems nearly every other week. Now, I don’t know, the spark’s gone. We've lost that lovin' feelin'. Maybe.

Well, that’s what I was half-articulating in that murky algae-filled bottom layer of my semiconscious mind. There’s a lot of dank rotted stuff down there. I can’t face it, ugh. That’s why it's down there.
But The Devil All The Time, with its own-brand 90-miles-an-hour-down-a-dead-end-street amphetamine rush of gap-toothed whiskey-stained paraplegic-pedophilic shotgun-blasting animal-crucifying holy rolling raping rural delights has perked me up, plumped my feathers, slapped me round the kisser with an empty pack of Five Brothers, bought me a ticket to Meade, Ohio, and, because there’s nothing so sweet as reading about lives you can be grateful you’re not living, put a lopsided smile back onto the front of my head.

I recommend this book as long as you don’t mind if the odd maggot drops down onto your shoulder as you read.

[PirateSteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donald Ray Pollock wrote this book using many characters, including preachers. There are at least three of'em in The Devil All The Time. One good old preacher is dying but won't admit it for nothing. The other two ... Well, they done got themselves into just the kind of trouble Mr.Pollock likes to write about.
From the Bible we find in
Matthew 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers ... "
No. Wait a minute. That one doesn't apply here. There ain't no peacemakers in Knockemstiff, Ohio.

so let's try Ezekiel 13:3
"Thus saith the Lord God: Woe unto the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit ..."
Yea, those other two preachers should have studied over that one a bit longer.

then there is Revelation 22:12
"... behold, I come quickly ..."
Yelp ... that one's gonna happen.

Willard and Charlotte Russell are doing the best they can to raise a good christian son. His name is Arvin.
And Arvin turns out well despite a lot of difficulties ... it just seems that in Knockemstiff, Ohio, the devil is on your ass All-The-Time.
Still, Arvin grows into a young man simply trying to make his way in a tough old world, helping his family anyway he can.
Even when other folks come along that maybe chose for themselves a pathway to hell ... Arvin knows a shortcut.

Movie soon to be released on Netflix.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzaz...

excerpts are spoiler(ish)
page 1 prologue
narration
"Willard eased himself down on the high side of the log and motioned for his son to kneel beside him in the dead, soggy leaves. Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time."

page 11/12
narration
"... in the fall of 1945, not long after the war had ended. The greyhound made its regular stop in Meade, Ohio, a little paper-mill town an hour south of Columbus that smelled like rotten eggs. Strangers complained about the stench, but the locals liked to brag that it was the sweet smell of money."

"On one of the Solomons, he and a couple of other men from his outfit had run across a marine skinned alive by the Japanese and nailed to a cross made out of two palm trees. The raw, bloody body was covered with black flies. They could still see the man's heart beating in his chest. Unable to offer anything but a little mercy, Willard shot the marine behind the ear, and they took him down and covered him with rocks at the foot of the cross. The inside of Willard's head hadn't been the same since."

page 27
Helen (Preacher Roy Laferty's wife) and Emma Russell (Willard's mother)
'"No, I got to go," Helen said. "Roy's waiting on me."'
"He's preaching over in Millersburg tonight, where them people got their eyes carved out. We been out gathering spiders all morning. Thank God, with the way this weather's been they're still pretty easy to find."
'"You be careful, Helen,"Emma said"'
"'Oh, don't worry," the girl said, as she started down off the porch, "they ain't too bad once you get used to them."'

page 40
Country Club member warns Henry Dunlap (Willard's landlord)
"You might want to watch what you say about that woman."
"'What woman?" Henry said."'
"You were talking about a man named Willard Russell out there, right?"
"Yeah, Russell's his name. So?"
"Buddy, it's no skin off my back, but he damn near killed a man with his fist last fall for talking trash about his wife. The one he beat up still ain't right, sits around with a coffee can hanging from his neck to catch his slobbers. You might want to think about that."
"You sure we're talking about the same guy? The one I know wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful."
"Maybe he's just the quiet type. Those are the ones you got to watch."

page 41/42
narration
"Someone was always dying somewhere, and in the summer of 1958, the year Arvin Eugene Russell counted himself ten years old, it was his mother's turn."

Charlotte tells Willard how she wants to spend her last days.
"'Charlotte raised up in her bed and said to Willard, "I think I had a dream."'
"'I know it sounds crazy, but I want to go home and pretend we own the house for a while."
"How you gonna do that."
"With this stuff they got me on," she said, "they could tell me I was the Queen of Sheba and I wouldn't know any different. Besides, you heard what the doctor said. I sure as hell don't want to spend what's left of my time in this place."
"Is that what the dream was about?"
'"She gave him a puzzled look, "What dream?"'

page 60
Arvin speaks with Hank (local store clerk)
"How would a person go about getting hold of the law?"
"'Well, either cause some trouble or call them on the telephone, I reckon," Hank said."'
"Could you call 'em for me? I ain't never used a telephone before."
"What do you want with the sheriff, son?"
"'He's dead," the boy said."'
"Who is?"
"My dad." Arvin said."'
"You mean your mom, don't you?"
"'...he shook his head."No, my mom's been dead three days. I'm talking about my dad."'

page 68
Deputy Sheriff Bodecker and Arvin
"'Bodecker pinched his nostrils together, tried to breath through his mouth. "What the hell is that smell then?"'
"'That's them up there," Arvin said, pointing into the trees."'
"Bodecker lifted his flashlight. Animals in various states of decay hung all around them, some in the branches and others from tall wooden crosses."
"'Goddamn it, boy, what the hell is this?" he said, turning the light back on Arvin just as a white, squirming maggot dropped onto the boy's shoulder. He brushed it off as casually as someone would a leaf or a seed. Bodecker waved his revolver around as he started to back away."'
"'It's a prayer log," Arvin said, his voice barely a whisper now."'
"What? A prayer log?"
"'Arvin nodded, staring at his father's body. "But it don't work," he said."'

page 197
Preacher Teagardin and Arvin
"She was crazy"
"'No," Arvin said, "she was just lonely." He pressed the barrel against the back of Teagardin's head. "But don't worry, I ain't gonna make you suffer like she did."'
"'Now hold on here, goddamn it. Jesus Christ, man, you wouldn't kill a preacher, would you?"'
"'You ain't no preacher, you worthless piece of shit,' Arvin said."'
"'Let me pray first," he sobbed. He started to put his hands together."'
"'I already did it for you," Arvin said. "Put in one of them special requests you are always talking about, asked Him to send you straight to hell."'

page 255
narration/Arvin
"Going back to the other side of the log, he knelt down in the place where he had once prayed next to his father. He tried his best to picture God, but his thoughts kept wandering. He finally gave up, found it easier to imagine his parents looking down on him instead. It seemed as if his entire life, everything he'd ever seen or said or done, had led up to this moment; alone at last with the ghosts of his childhood. He began to pray, the first time since his mother had died. '"Tell me what to do,"'

[Pakinam · Rating 5 out of 5]

يا نهار أبيض..هو في حلاوة كدة؟!
ده طلع فيه و فيه كتير كمان:)
لو عاوز تعرف الرواية بتتكلم عن ايه،أقرأ أي مراجعة غير دي عشان أنا مش حكتب عنها أي تفاصيل..
أما لو عاوز تعرف الرواية دي حتعمل فيك ايه ممكن تقرأ المراجعة ..لو تحب يعني:)

شيطان أبد الدهر...رواية للكاتب الأمريكي دونالد راي بولوك...صدرت عام ٢٠١١ ولها فيلم موجود علي نتفليكس
under the name of 'the devil all the time'..
وده الإسم الأصلي للرواية اللي أكيد أحسن بكتير من العنوان المترجم..

ولأول مرة من فترة طويلة أقرأ رواية من غير ما أكتب أي حاجة أثناء القراءة..مكتبتش ولا إقتباس مع إنها مليانة ..مكتبتش ولا إسم مع إن فيها أسماء كتير جداً..حتي ملخص كل جزء زي ما عادة بعمل مهتمتش أكتب عنه ولا حتي كلمة..
ودة إن دل علي شئ فهو معناه إني مكنتش عاوزة أضيع ثانية واحدة من كتر إستمتاعي بالكتاب:)

الرواية حتعرف تفصلك عن عالمك الخارجي بطريقة غير طبيعية..حتلاقي نفسك مش مهتم تكلم حد أو تخرج أو تاكل في مواعيدك المعتادة وحتي القهوة اللي بحب اشربها سخنة بالذات وأنا بقرأ..شربتها علطول باردة أثناء قراءة هذه الرواية..
٤٦٢ صفحة من المتعة الخالصة ..من الرعب..من التوتر..من شدة الأعصاب..و حتبقي مش عاوز تسيب الكتاب من إيدك حتي و إنت متعذب كدة:))

مش قادرة أصنف الرواية أوي..هل هي رواية مرعبة أم رواية نفسية؟ هل هي رواية عن الإيمان ولا عن الشيطان ؟ هل هي رواية بوليسية ولا رواية عن الانحرافات الجنسية؟
الصراحة وبدون مبالغة هي كل دول مع بعض!

إسلوب السرد ممتع جداً...أحداث كتير و شخصيات أكتر ولكن الكاتب إستطاع بذكاء أن يربط كل الأحداث ببعض بطريقة عبقرية..الشخصيات مرسومة بعناية فائقة ..الحبكة ممتازة..اللغة سلسة والترجمة كانت جيدة جداً بس كان في بعض الغلطات الإملائية البسيطة و كلمات قليلة غير مفهومة...

الرواية حتخليك تفكر في النفس البشرية اللي ساعات بتكون معقدة جداً وساعات تانية بتكون ضعيفة جداً...
من خلال الأحداث حتشوف رجال دين ملهمش علاقة أصلاً بأي دين و حتعرف إن المبالغة في التدين ممكن تكون أحياناً أسواء من قلة التدين...
الكاتب في هذا الكتاب عاوز يقولنا إن مهماً كانت شخصيتك، و أياً كانت ظروفك و درجة تدينك لازم حيكون عندك نقطة ضعف والشيطان حيفضل دايماً يحاول يدخلك منها بكل الطرق الممكنة..
ساعات حتعرف تقاومه و ساعات تانية مش حتقدر بس الأكيد إننا لازم نفضل دايماً نحاول...

راوية مذهلة...ممتعة جداً ..مرعبة جداً جداً...
من نوعية الكتب اللي مش حتسيبك في حالك لفترة طويلة وحتي لو حاولت تنساها مش حتعرف...كأن الكاتب بيقولك أنا وراك وراك يا عم متحاولش:)
شيطان أبد الدهر ..أهلاً بيكِ في قائمة أجمل قراءات السنة من غير تفكير 😍

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compelling piece of fiction, written with a deft hand, takes the cake for disturbing and depraved. Unwavering in his delivery, Donald Ray Pollock gives us a peek at the world, through the eyes of some gnarly and grotesque individuals. What stands out is the casual ease in which the violence and carnage is served up, sans the antics that reek of shock value, making this deliciously dark plot palatable in some strange and unnerving way. That's not to say the reality these people call life is easy to choke down, especially for those of us that have impulse control and a moral compass; so prepare yourself. Sometimes their decisions are born out of desperation and other times it's pure evil at the helm, or the devil all the time, if you will. Most disturbing of all is the twisted rationalization that tends to happen within the mind—the justification that this act, whatever it might be, is the only way to feel a connection to their maker. 

“It’s hard to live a good life. It seems like the devil don’t ever let up.”

There’s the husband with the makeshift alter, deep in the woods, where blood is spilled in the name of sacrifice. It’s the only way this devoted husband can see to save his wife from the painful end she’s staring down. And his son, forever changed by the bloody horrors he's had to witness, was the one and only character I found myself clinging to—rooting for some sort of redeeming end.

Creepiest of all, the traveling pastor that claims faith alone helped him to overcome his very real fear of spiders. Now he shocks congregations by covering his body with the eight-legged freaks (*cringe*) or eating them (*gag*) to prove his message. Have I mentioned how much I hate spiders? My fear runs so deep, my skin is crawling even writing this. And you can’t forget the pastor’s strange sidekick—a man that opted to drink poison to prove his faith, earning him a pair of shriveled legs and a bad attitude.

Then there’s the husband and wife that spend their ‘vacations’ trolling the highway for ‘models’. She's the bait for the next man deemed lucky enough to sate the disgusting photographer and his relentless quest for the perfect picture.

There’s a host of death, destruction and evil deeds connecting two small towns in Ohio and West Virginia, and the way the author pieces the multiple storylines together is shocking in all its perfection. Some might even say fitting, for this dangerously dark cast.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emphatic 5 star review! Chose to read this book as a long shot, based solely on the book description, and as a result of a recommendation to paperbackdreams YouTube channel - I am so glad I did! Totally blown away!

Can’t wait for the Netflix movie in September so I can see on the screen the story that played out in my head as I read.

Will absolutely read everything by this author, he is a gem!

[Debbie Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.2 ⛧⛧⛧⛧

Reading The Devil All The Time felt like gazing into the abyss, and guess what? It gazed back. While staring at each other for a while, it told me a tale about the darkest of human hearts, the devil's favorite place to roam.

Set in rural Ohio and West Virginia, this grim novel explores multiple characters. While some have embraced the devil into their dark hearts,  others have tried to confront it.

Donald Ray Pollock weaves the different plot threads together in such a vivid, uncompromising way, leaving the readers with a raw mirror of what might be lurking in the shadow of human consciousness.

The Devil All The Time oozes with a soundless storm of decay, with roaring violence, blood sacrifice, tragedies, and twisted, unhinged characters, stripped down to the core.
There is no poetry here, nor sentiments, so if you want butterflies and rainbows, walk away because this book is dark, brutal, and dirty. I loved it.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.”

When Arvin Russell's mother begins to deteriorate from cancer, his father, Willard, goes to desperate lengths to save her. In Willard's mind, only prayers and blood sacrifices can heal her. A police officer who hopes to be the town's sheriff will do anything to win the vote. A want-to-be famous photographer aspires to capture the most heinous pictures. Preachers in this town are anything but righteous.

The Devil All The Time is a viscous, gritty book, devoid of all hope. It's about desperation and the frustration of limitations. Gruesome in the realest of ways, the horror that Pollock weaves into The Devil All the Time is nothing short of what is really happening in our world today. The cast of characters featured in this novel are delightfully messed up, their lives are crushing and oppressive. Pollock brings their explosive stories to life with a real sense of heart. I could not stop reading.

Just Brilliant!

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.8* of five

I finally saw the 2020 Netflix film and it's...good, not great. If you've got a subscription and are in a noir kind of mood it's a decent choice.

The Publisher Says: “Take a man from Ohio who's worked blue collar, send him for an M.F.A., and set him loose. From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiff—called “powerful, remarkable, exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times—comes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. 

In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic over­tones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting. 

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. 

Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.”

My Review: This is Donald Ray Pollock's first novel. After being mauled and kicked by Knockemstiff, his short-story collection, I was chomping at the bit for this book to come in to my village library. Today was my first wholly peaceful day, and what better thing to do with a peaceful day than to read about the broken and forgotten members of Murrikin society?

So I got on the Greyhound for Knockemstiff, garlic around my neck and an illegal assault rifle perched in the seat beside me, scared stiff that one of these Hill Williams was gonna start some shit with the fancy New Yorker getting' off the bus.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what happened.

Look...read Knockemstiff (my review here) and, if you feel the need to bleach your eyeballs and you want to scream, cry, and unswallow on average once a page, this isn't the book for you. It's not that worse things happen in it, although some do happen that made me scream, cry, and unswallow, it's that this novel is unremittingly grim and a lot less easy to stop reading than a story collection is.

I started this book around 4pm. It's now 3am. I paused long enough to eat some cucumber and tomato salad and a wedge of watermelon around 10pm, and I think I piddled around midnight...but that was with the book propped open on the tank top. I'll mop the floor tomorrow...errrmmm, later today.

Pollock is the kind of writer Hemingway wanted to be. Simple, elegantly shod, carefully manicured sentences whip out their truncheons and, never mind the flying blood, wail on the innocent reader's brain-box. Dazed, in pounding agony from the grinding of severely fractured bone plates in the readerly skull, eyes absorb and record and flinch away from the matter-of-fact violence. It's not played for gore or shock. Pollock just...writes it the way it was in his head.

Mother of all the gods. That sentence scares me shitless.

The stories that make up the braids of the novel are, in themselves, good novellas. Put together, though, the effect is overkill. Oh dear. Bad choice of words. It's one bridge too far into horrorville. The last thirty or so pages, while well written, just didn't keep up the pace of revelation. In every other part of the book, there was a blood clot coming loose and causing fresh damage as the characters got closer to the inevitable ending...so I kept moving...and then, well, some of that sense of howcanhetopthis zomg he did it got lost.

And now I will be turning on the Snarkinator. Those whose tastes are for tomes lit'ry which ahhhr evah sew reefahayned, please seek the exits.

Pollock got an MFA. I find MFA writers are all much of a muchness to me. A bit like opening a box of dried dates hoping for something other than a sugar coma, permaybehaps a peppermint or a Red Hot secreted in amongst the sticky soft sweetness. I have my list of offenders, but I've puked on them elsewhere, so I'll leave it at Paul Auster Jeffrey Eugenides Jonathan Franzen Dave Eggers Jonathan Safran Foer et alii, none of whose books I can tell apart from the authors's various ouevres without a look at the spine or title page. Yes yes, nice sentence, lovely image, I'm sorry was something supposed to move me here, to reach across the gap between our brains and change me? Cause it sure as pork rinds didn't. And it never does, all the mooin' and carryin'-on y'all groupies do aside.

And the last, well, last six or so chapters of this novel? They're the first time I felt Pollock's MFA intrude into his writing. He's still got more potency in his keyboarding fingers than those boys. I knock off a whoppin' tenth of a star from perfect because of that. It's a little like complaining that the blowjob didn't last long enough (I don't have any idea what the equivalent is for women, sorry ladies but I am just not anxious to know either). Describe the worst sex you ever had: It was marvelous, as the old joke goes.

And, not a small consideration, is it me, or is it he? I could simply be grumping about this because the way things turn out isn't the way I want them to. But hang on! The ending, you'll recall I said above, is inevitable. And it is. The only ending this book could have. I liked it!

So maybe, just maybe, it's that bloody degree reefahayneeng the gasoline-and-pigshit essence of this wonderful book. I sure as all get-out hate that idea. I suspect it's true. But, and this is KEY, do NOT let this discourage you from visiting the bottom of the heap with Pollock. This is the real deal.

The real deal.

[Jennifer Masterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every single star for this extremely dark and disturbing novel. Even though it took me a long time to finish, not once did I want to give up on it. I listened to the audio version. I think that the brilliant narration by Mark Bramhall added to this novel. He is one of the best narrators that I have come across. If you listen to audio this is a good one.

This is my first Donald Ray Pollock novel but it certainly will not be my last. Highly recommended to people who can handle dark and disturbing stories. I would characterize this as "grit lit". It truly is the darkest book that I have come across in a long time. Lots of death and vile characters!!!

I am a Vegetarian. This wasn't easy on me. There were numerous times I had to stop listening. It was still worth it. Brilliant story, well fleshed out characters, and amazing writing!

*Trigger warning - several animals die in this novel*.

[Misty Marie Harms · Rating 4 out of 5]

You would think this would be another demon read, but amazingly not. There's a bloody prayer log with animal sacrifices, though, so take that as you will. We are following a bunch of people that seem random, however they end up all connected by the end. Some are easy, like the cop that unknowingly has a serial killer sister and brother-in-law. In others, you never see the connection until the very end and have to do a double take. A great horror read! Recommend!

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal, con grandes personajes, tan buenos los principales como los secundarios. Realmente el diablo no abandonó ni un segundo a Donald Ray Pollock mientras redactaba este libro, aunque sin duda ya le había vendido su alma cuando escribió Knockemstiff.

Como diría Murphy, todo lo que es susceptible de ser corrompido será corrompido, solo hay que esperar el tiempo suficiente. En esta tierra a la que Dios hace tiempo que no dirige su mirada, el tiempo ha pasado ya y muy pocos son los que se han salvado de la podredumbre, aunque, y esto es lo que lo hace todo realmente terrible, en estos pobres "diablos a casi todas horas" permanecen unas pocas gotas de conciencia que les hace ser impotentes y, a veces, no siempre, horrorizados espectadores de ellos mismos.

“Al chaval de Iowa le costó más tiempo que a la mayoría darse cuenta de lo que estaba pasando, pero aún así no ofreció mucha resistencia. Carl se tomó su tiempo y sacó por lo menos una veintena de fotos de objetos saliéndole de varios lugares: bombillas, perchas y latas de sopa. Para cuando dejó la cámara y dio el asunto por acabado, ya empezaba a oscurecer. Se limpió las manos y la navaja en la camisa del chaval y luego se puso a caminar hasta que encontró una nevera Westinghouse entre la basura… las paredes estaban cubiertas de una fina capa de moho verde y en un rincón había un frasco roto de mermelada viscosa y gris. Joder, ¿vas a meterlo ahí dentro? – Me da la impresión de que ha dormido en sitios peores –dijo Carl.”

Pero no estamos ante una historia de perdedores. Nos encontramos en un escalón más abajo, el de aquellos que nunca han tenido nada que perder y viven la desesperanza de los que nacieron con muy pocos números de la tómbola y en el entorno equivocado… podríamos ser nosotros mismos. Y esta es la gran fuerza de los relatos de Pollock, porque esta novela podría entenderse como un libro de relatos de igual forma que su anterior obra –Knockemstiff, el mismo pueblo que volvemos a visitar en este libro y que es el lugar de nacimiento del autor- podía leerse como una novela. Por abundante que sea la basura, y hay mucha, los personajes y sus acciones se nos hacen muy reales por verosímiles: su estupidez, su depravación, su amargura, su degeneración, incluso su inocencia, su candidez, que también la hay, todo se nos antoja turbadoramente cercano.

Hay sexo, sí; hay violencia, mucha; hay perversiones, no pocas. El sexo puede ser algo muy retorcido; matar no es solo acabar con la vida de alguien. Pero nada es gratuito, el relato es sencillo, no se recrea en lo abyecto, y lo que es más perturbador, no todo está en lo leído. Al igual que en el erotismo, también en la violencia es mucho más potente sugerir que enseñar. Una escena contada hasta el mínimo detalle es eso, una escena; una escena sugerida, si está bien sugerida, son miles de escenas, tan morbosas, retorcidas y malsanas como el alma de cada uno de nosotros pueda llegar a ser.

“Cynthia era uno de sus mayores éxitos. No era más que una chica de quince años cuando él había ayudado a uno de sus profesores del Heavenly Reach a sumergirla bajo las aguas del Flash Fish Creek durante una ceremonia de bautismo. Aquella misma noche se había follado a aquella criatura delicada debajo de unos rosales, en los terrenos de la universidad, y al cabo de un año se había casado con ella para poder trabajársela sin que los padres fisgaran en sus asuntos. En los últimos tres años, Preston le había enseñado todas las cosas que se imaginaba que un hombre podía hacerle a una mujer. No quería ni pensar en cuántas horas de su vida le había costado, pero ahora la chica estaba tan bien entrenada como el mejor de los perros. Solamente tenía que chasquear los dedos y a ella se le empezaba a hacer la boca agua pensando en lo que a él le gustaba denominar su "cetro".”

Una novela que crea dependencia, que se lee alternando las sonrisas – comprensivas o culpables- con las muecas de asco por esa inmundicia que nos degrada y nos agrada como ese picor que aliviamos hasta hacernos sangre. Solo un pero, no pequeño, estuvo a punto de costarle una estrellita: el final de la novela es demasiado justiciero y, paradójicamente, no hace justicia al resto del libro.

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Appalachian Spring

Combine the Heartland evangelism of the Origin of the Brunists with the Appalachian haplessness of The Glass Castle, then season with a few homicides and sexual perversions as in American Psycho and you have The Devil All the Time, an everyday tale of disenchantment with the land of opportunity and its principles.

The main action takes place in the hill country of Southeastern Ohio. The hamlet of Knockemstiff, a real place, is ground zero. The place names are telling. Knockemstiff nestles among other communities like Bacon Flat; Hungry Holler; Deadman Crossing; Scioto Furnace, Aid, Sinking Spring - places named in passing, never meant for settlement. One major purpose of the American Revolution was to open the land to the West of the Appalachians. The British had churlishly refused both permission and protection. But when the first settlers arrived, they just kept passing through. All except, it appears, the morally and genetically deficient.

What seems to be the common thread among the characters is the desire to escape - getting on, getting ahead, and getting out. Getting out not just of Knockemstiff, or Appalachia, but out of America. They all have ambitions - a reputation for something other than what they are, the re-capturing of a childhood feeling lost forever, the sound of the voice of God promised by the preacher at the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified, or simply the possession of a shack on a hill. But they know that no one gets out alive. Their frustration is magnified by circumstances. These are people being driven mad by the cultural weight of Christian fundamentalism, physical isolation in the narrow ravines of worn out coal mountains, and an overpowering environmental bleakness.

If they do escape, it’s only temporary and usually as fugitives from justice. Murder is an act of religious faith; suicide, ditto; serial killing for no reason at all is therapeutic. A kind of nihilistic drive appears genetic. At least it’s passed along by the combination of nature and nurture available around Knockemstiff. The physical connection which generalizes events in Knockemstiff to the rest of America is US Route 50, one of the first national roads built in the 1920’s, which runs from Ocean City Md to San Francisco (now largely replaced by Interstate 71). It passes through mainly rural country; parts of it have been called the ‘loneliest road in America’. Route 50 is the Main Street through the town of Chillicothe (the fictional Meade), about three or so miles North of Knockemstiff. It’s the River Styx by which the dead and the good-as-dead commute in and out of Hell.

Smells are significant throughout The Devil from the outset: the rotten eggs-like fumes from the local paper mill; the rotting animal flesh surrounding Willard’s ‘prayer log;’ the stink of Carl’s body and his wife, Sandy’s, mouth; the throat-catching ammonia reek of the roadside dive; the smell of Charlotte’s lingering cancerous death. The foul odors of Dante’s Canto 11 seem rather tame in comparison. I think Pollock’s point is that closing one’s eyes to the devastation that is America is an inadequate defense. The effects of this devastation are pervasive. Everyone is affected, even those who choose not to see.

One might suspect that Pollock is slandering this inherently beautiful part of the world. But helass recent reports suggest he may have restrained himself somewhat. The biggest industry roundabout is the state prison which is meant to offset the secular decline in the coal industry. For many locals it seems to be a second home close to home. Until recently there was an uranium enrichment facility threatening the locals with further genetic distress; but even that has now closed.

And Pollock may have toned down his fictionalizing of real events. For example an entire family - mother, father, and two adult sons - have recently been arrested for the murder of another entire family - seven adults and a sixteen year old boy - over an issue of custody of an infant (they did leave the infant unharmed, they are keen to point out). The incident was planned over several months and carried out like a military operation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-...). The pattern is precisely that described in The Devil - seething tension frequently erupting into brutal violence on a massive scale.

Ultimately, Pollock is making an aesthetic point: America has become an ugly place, a place without discernment. It suffers from a massive lack of taste and this infects everything from the physical environment to morality. As he describes one of his most lugubrious characters: “Looking across the room, he rested his eyes on a cheap framed picture hanging on the wall, a flowers-and-fruit piece of shit that nobody would ever remember, not one person who ever slept in this stinking room. It served no purpose that he could think of, other than to remind a person that the world was a sorry-ass place to be stuck living in.”

Writing The Devil five years before Trump, I suppose makes Pollock prophetic.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A f&%king masterpiece. A literary work of art. An exquisite boutique of emotions. It's like the moment you turn off the lights and you're thrown into complete darkeness. It's the best book I've read this year. Completely unsavory, horrifically brutal, and masterfully told. Pollock is a master of his craft, and it shows in this amazing work.

We follow three generations of the Russel family as the navigat life in the wilds of Ohio and West Virginia. A good Christian family just trying to survive in a hostile environment. From grandmother to grandson, we see religious fanatics, perverts, murderers, perverted murderers, alcoholics, corrupt cops, corrupt preists, and everything in between. It's full of darkness and despair, but that's also what makes it amazing and beautiful. You'll love and hate the well-rounded characters who are nothing more than products of their environments.

If you're a fan of depravity. If you like a story that's full of sad, depressing characters. If you love a book that holds you underwater and never lets you up. If you want to explore the darker parts of your imagination. Then this is the right book for you. I absolutely loved it and can't wait to read more of Pollocks works. Do yourself a favor and give this one a try.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christ's image is everywhere - but the Devil's carnage is too, in this compulsively readable, blood-soaked thriller.

Although he's less "artiste" than Flannery O'Connor and William Gay (the crowned Queen and King of Southern Gothic), Donald Ray Pollock holds his own among such venerated company. His prose is taut, hard-boiled, and so is the tension he creates. There's a sick decadence here. It's ripe with all the grotesque ingredients necessary for such a story: twisted revival meetings, a travelling freak show, a husband/wife serial killer team, a predatory preacher, poverty, chicken livers, and death. Death, death, death.

Jesus' serene face hangs on the wall but what's hanging over the prayer log? I don't know, but it smells bad. And it's dripping.

There's such a bounty of twisted characters, writhing in derelict existences, it's hard to find any hope. Pollock doles out hope in miserly portions, mainly in the form of characters trying to find their way through the mire. Arvin and his adoptive family are such people. People who want peace and don't wish harm on others. But that doesn't mean harm won't come.

There's so much savagery, it becomes commonplace. This world is relentless in its failure to reflect the Saviour's heart. The few who don't participate in moral bankruptcy look on in bewilderment. And so do we.

But there is justice for the reader. Pollock may not have the answers, but he delivers, in breakneck fashion, a certain satisfaction. I will read more by this guy, just as soon as I catch my breath.

“It's hard to live a good life...It seems like the Devil don't ever let up.”

4.5 stars

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME by Donald Ray Pollock

Other Books I Enjoyed by This Author: This is my first and upon finishing, I bought two more.

Affiliate Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7576/978030774...

Release Date: July 10th, 2012

General Genre: Literary, Thrillers, Suspense, Family Saga, Crime

Sub-Genre/Themes: Southern Gothic Horror, Serial Killers, Human Monsters, Religious Trauma, Coming-Of-Age. Triggers: Suicide, Rape, Kidnapping, Child Abuse, Graphic Violence, Sexual Predators

Writing Style: third person omniscient, gritty, relentless, poetic, bleak, provocative

What You Need to Know: The title is, The Devil All the Time. And it lives up to it. I'll quote from The Lord of the Rings, "Do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands." Meaning, this is dark and bleak and the sun does not nor will it shine. So why should you read it? Because it's powerful storytelling and it will live in your reader's heart forever.

My Reading Experience: I buddy read this book with a friend who is a writer so the discussions we had surrounding this book made it an even more pleasurable experience. This is a book for readers who love dynamic, engaging, Southern Gothic storytelling with a powerful narrator who can peer inside the minds of all the characters revealing the darkness that resides there.
There is so much to unpack, it's difficult to know where to start and what to say. I'll try. There are multiple main characters, everyone has a few chapters and the timeline goes back and forth into the past and the present. It's not difficult to know which is which. I enjoyed the style.
We follow one family in rural Ohio very closely. A man named Willard, the woman he marries. The family they start. The child they raise, Arvin, and the tragedies that befall them, make Arvin the young man he becomes.

We also follow Sandy and Carl. Their chapters follow the couple on a killing spree. Carl enjoys photographing his wife having sex with young male hitchhikers and then they kill them. It is extremely disturbing.
Also disturbing is the pervasive theme of religious trauma in all its forms woven throughout the entire story. Your heart will naturally grab onto a central character, I won't say which, and you will trust to hope. It's ok, you can allow it. It feels good to do so and it is this hope that will see you through to the end of this novel. I will never forget my time here. I thought about the title a lot. And how the author applied it. I can't really discuss it in detail without spoilers but I will say, after watching the movie on Netflix starring Tom Holland and Bill Skarsgård, I know the message of this book and it unlocked a new favorite sub-genre for me. And also I have begun collecting authors and their books in this very specific tone/subject matter/style. So, check out my comps. I will read everything by this author. A new favorite.

Final Recommendation: For readers who enjoy bleak, dark, depraved crime sagas about humans doing horrible things to each other in sad, small towns and the deep, psychological impact it has on people for the rest of their lives.
Comps: Tiffany McDaniel (Betty, On the Savage Side) Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, Cormac McCarthy, Natural Born Killers (1994), Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell, David Joy

[Ana Cristina Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una lectura contundente, impresionante. Pollock nos sumerge en un mundo que va más allá del gótico sureño que lo inspira: esto es puro terror y malignidad, como dice el título, a todas horas, sin descanso. A pesar de todo el contenido desagradable, de todos los horrores que surgen tanto de la naturaleza como de la condición humana, tengo la impresión de que no sobra nada. El autor no pone todos esos detalles escalofriantes para atraer la atención del lector ni para vender libros; es simplemente su visión. Una especie de infierno por el que circulan todo tipo de personajes, algunos inocentes, otros víctima de sus propias adicciones y enfermedades, pero que inevitablemente interactúan y se causan más mal que bien. La vida es un laberinto extraño del que es difícil salir bien parado, parece decirnos.

Pero aquellos que buscan la salvación en la espiritualidad y la religión se equivocan, ya que los predicadores pueden ser lo más parecido al Diablo:

El inválido asintió con la cabeza y dedicó una sonrisa a la congregación. Llevaba una guitarra destartalada en el regazo y un peinado estilo tazón. Tenía el peto remendado con parches de tela de saco y las piernas flacas retorcidas en ángulos abruptos. Llevaba puesta una camisa blanca sucia y una corbata de colores vivos. Más tarde Willard diría que aquel se parecía al Príncipe de las Tinieblas y el otro a un payaso en horas bajas.

Aparte del tema, creo que la forma en que lo desarrolla es perfecta: no sobra ni falta nada y el autor te va arrastrando, incluso cuando querrías apartar la mirada y dejar de leer. Auténtico.

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully-written, captivating book about a number of mostly poverty-stricken rural characters, some of whom are down on their luck and others of whom are simply bad to the bone.

Set in rural Ohio and West Virginia, the story takes place over a period from the end of World War II until the middle of the 1960s. It weaves together the strands of several different stories, and the characters include a husband and wife team of serial killers who hunt their male "models" along the nation's highways. There are a couple of seriously screwed-up preachers, a totally bent sheriff, a war veteran who spends hours at his "prayer log" sacrificing and pleading with God to save his wife who is dying of cancer, and their son, Arvin, who pulls the various parts of the story together. The supporting cast includes a number of minor, but equally well-drawn characters, virtually all of whom are unforgettable.

Also unforgettable is the setting. Pollock paints a vivid portrait of these small towns and isolated farms where hope and opportunity are totally foreign concepts. To say that these people lead often desperate, hard scrabble lives would be an understatement. Although the book is set in the middle of the Twentieth Century, in some respects many of these people are still living as though it were the beginning of the century.

There is a lot of brutal action in this book, but the story is so well-told that Pollock draws you in from virtually the first line. And even though it's very hard to sympathize with a lot of the characters, you turn the last page with a deep sense of regret that the book has ended. Donald Ray Pollock is also the author of the acclaimed Knockemstiff and he is definitely a writer to look for.

[The Belladonna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.”

What!! I. Was. Not. Prepared. This “hillbilly gothic noir” as described by Pollock had me in quite a chokehold. Hot damn! Dark. Sinister. Bleak. Devil All the Time leaves a heavy residue on your mood and mind.

“Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying.”

“I’ve always viewed the world as a sad and often tragic place, and that tends to come out in my work.” -Donald Ray Pollock

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

- "شيطان أبد الدهر"، بوتقة ينصهر فيها العذاب والجرائم والانحرافات الجنسية والعقد النفسية مع رشّة من الدين والعهر وبعض حبيبات خيبات الأمل والتوق للهروب، تسخّن على لغة سردية رفيعة وتُسكب سلسالة بحبكة متماسكة في قالب بوليسي كلاسيكي لتضيئ بقتامتها وسوداويتها كإحدى أفضل الروايات في الأدب الأمريكي والعالمي.

- تدور أحداث الرواية في الريف، بين أوهايو وفيرجينيا الغربية في فترة زمنية ما بين انتهاء الحرب العالمية الثانية ونهاية الستينات من القرن الماضي، بفلسفة دائرية ختمت الأحداث في ذات المكان وتركت للحبر ان يتسرب ليرسم خطاً جديداً مستمراً للحكاية...

- الشخصيات كثيرة ومتعددة، لكن السيد "بولوك" أجاد نسج الرابط بينها بشكل متقن وكان هناك توازن في الحضور للشخصيات الرئيسية العديدة كما ان الشخصيات الثانوية لعبت دورها المرسوم بدقة ولم تكن حاشية اضافية لا فائدة منها.

- الحبكة كانت ممتازة من بداية الرواية الى آخرها، القصص المتضافرة التي بدأت تزداد واحدة تلو الاخرى والربط الذكي قام به الكاتب بواسطة شخصية "ارفن" بين كل هذه الحكايات تناسب من حيث مدة زمن الرواية وصيرورة امكنتها.

- السرد سلس جداً، اللغة المستعملة ممتعة (سأعود للترجمة في النهاية)، الوصف الإنطباعي كان مدهشاً ومقززاً ومؤثراً ومبهراً في آن.

- لن أدخل في تفاصيل الرواية لكن سأعلّق على بعض القصص:
1- تصوير قصة حب ولارد لشارلوت، و"عويله" بالدعاء لها وتقديم القرابين المتعددة من أجل شفاءها كان ملحمياً، لكن على ما بدا ان ملاك الموت قد اقفل طريق الدعاء نحو السماء! وفي المقابل قصة الحب الخافتة الصامتة التي جمعت إيرسكل مع حبيته التي ماتت.

2- ثلاثة وعّاظ في هذه الرواية، واحد بسيط والثاني معتوه والثالث مُغتصب، ورغم وجودهم ووجود صور السيد المسيح والصلبان والكنائس في كل زوايا العمل إلا ان الأفعال كانت بمعظمها شيطانية وشريرة!

يشقّ على المرء ان يحيا حياة صالحة. يبدو وكأن الشيطان لا يدع احداً وشأنه

- الترجمة كانت جيدة جداً، التعليق الأول على العنوان فأعتقد ان ترجمته خاطئة وغير دقيقة وتشوش القارئ، "الشيطان في كل حين" كانت لتكون أفضل، كما ان هناك بعض الأخطاء المطبعية البسيطة ايضاً. التعليق الثاني على ما ورد على الغلاف الخارجي، كان الأفضل عدم اعطاء رأي بل اقتباس او ترجمة النص الأصلي للغلاف رغم انني احببت جداً ان المترجم لم يتدخل ويكتب مقدمة على عادة بعض المترجمين.

- قصة عن الرغبة في الهرب، العبور من اللحظة الآنية الى لحظة اخرى في مكان آخر، قصة عن قبح الواقع وعبثيته، عن الأحلام المتكسرة والضياعات العديدة وقوافل الندم.

لو فرضنا بأن نصف ما يقوله التاريخ كان صحيحاً، عندها يكون الشيء الوحيد الذي افلح فيه هذا العالم السافل الفاسد هو تهيئة الإنسان للعيش في الحياة الآخرة

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willard Russell prays over a prayer log for his cancer-ridden wife with his son, Arvin. A spider-eating preacher is convinced he can bring back the dead. A husband and wife pick up hitchhikers, photograph them, and kill them. How will all of their paths intersect?

Knockemstiff was one of my favorite books this year and I was anxious for Donald Ray Pollock to try his hand at a novel. Now I'm anxious for him to write a couple hundred more.

The Devil All the Time dips into the same well as Knockemstiff at first. I had to admit I wasn't sure about things in the early-goings, not until I saw where things are going. The stories don't appear related at all except for the backwoods Ohio setting. Not until Arvin and Leonora wound up in the same place.

The overlying theme of The Devil All The Time seems to be that you can't run forever, something Williard, Roy, Teagardin, and most of the other characters learn the hard way by the story's end. I loved trying to figure out where the various plot threads would knot and tangle together. Besides obviously reminding me of Knockemstiff, it also reminded me of No Country for Old Men at times.

By far my favorite pair of characters to follow was Carl and Sandy. Since I've been watching a lot of Dexter lately, I latched on to the duo pretty quickly. Lee Bodecker was a close second, since he was the closest thing to a common character appearing in all the various threads.

By the time the end rolled around, I wasn't sure who would live, right up until the last page. The Devil All the Time was a brutal thrill ride through the sad lives of a fistful of characters. Five stars, no complaints.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey, parents, having problems getting you kids to behave in church? Let them spend a Sunday with Willard Russell. Willard isn’t a preacher, and he doesn’t have one of those big mall-like mega churches. What Willard has is a log in the woods. That’s right, a damn log in the woods. A prayer log if you will, and he’s hung up some crosses around it, and he makes sure that his son Arvin is out there all the time praying with all he’s got. Don’t mind all that dried blood and animal bones. Willard thinks the Good Lord needs a sacrifice if you ask him for something big, like curing his wife of cancer. Send your little ones with him for a full day of log prayin’ and blood sprayin’, and I’m sure you’ll never hear another peep out of them at your regular service again.

Willard and Arvin live in the area of Knockemstiff, Ohio, which should be familiar to those who read Pollock’s previous book. Some of the characters reappear here as he tells a story that extends from Willard’s return from the horrors of Pacific combat in World War II into the 1960s with multiple characters who all have blood on their hands in one form or another. We’ll meet a murderous husband and wife as well as a corrupt sheriff, and a bug eating holy man wannabe with a crippled sidekick.

Pollock again depicts a rural lifestyle where dreams die quickly, and the only people with any hope are the religious who remain convinced that God will someday reward them despite all evidence to the contrary in their miserable lives. As the years pass, all the characters act in ways that put them on an eventual collision course.

Another winner from Pollock who is right up there with Daniel Woodrell in depicting how harsh the rural lifestyle can be. It had a few too many coincidences in the end for my taste, but this is still a book that’s gonna be on my mind for a good long while.

[La loca de los libros · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Pleno la lectura conjunta del mes de julio con Devoradora de libros! 🔝👌😍

¡¡Novelón con mayúsculas!!

Aquí tenemos el ejemplo perfecto de expectativas cumplidas y con creces.
Es tanto lo que me ha hecho sentir Pollock con esta historia que me cuesta encontrar las palabras adecuadas para expresarlo, pero lo intentaré.

Allá vamos 👇

Donald Ray Pollock, que a la edad de cincuenta y dos años decide apuntarse a un programa de escritura creativa, nos regala esta obra maestra.
Una novela que me ha dejado asqueada y maravillado a partes iguales. ¿Cómo es eso posible? Pues Pollock lo ha conseguido.
No sé por qué motivo he tardado tanto en leerla, es oro puro de la novela negra y desde ya encabeza mi lista de mejores lecturas del año. Sin ninguna duda.

Está escrita relatando al detalle las miserias e inmundicias de la América rural del siglo XX de tal manera que pasas a ser uno más dentro de la novela. Y lo pasas mal, no es una experiencia agradable, eso seguro.
El regusto amargo que me ha dejado no se me quitará en días, las vidas de todos esos personajes desgraciados me han tocado el corazón, he cerrado la última página con una lágrima y eso es algo que pocas novelas consiguen.
Es una novela dura, nada amable ni endulza la realidad, te la muestra tal cual y eso a veces puede resultarte incómodo hasta el punto de llegar a apartar la mirada o notar un leve encogimiento en el estómago, es inevitable.
De ahí lo acertado del título, en cada página notarás al diablo acechando...

La historia me ha parecido impecable, así como los diálogos y personajes tan creíbles y tan humanos que han contribuido a que sea una lectura muy perturbadora. 
Cada personaje tiene la intensidad suficiente para calar en ti pero si he de quedarme con un par sería con Arvin y con Lenora ❤

La sinopsis es muy extensa y cuenta más de lo que debería, de hecho hay cosas que hubiera preferido no saber, así que mejor no la lean, yo tampoco voy a contar nada más allá de lo que me ha hecho sentir, simplemente quédense con las sensaciones que me ha dejado y déjense llevar por la maestría de Pollock a la hora de retratar todas las historias que se cruzan aquí. Es la mejor manera de disfrutar, o padecer más bien, el viaje.

🔝🔝🔝🔝🔝Lo estaba intercalando con otra novela que me estaba gustando pero claramente no al mismo nivel; La noche de los maniquís de Stephen Graham Jones. Pero llegué a un punto con la escritura de Pollock que ya no podía sacarme la historia de la cabeza. A pesar de su dureza quería seguir leyendo más y más.
He quedado prendada de sus letras y su narración magistral.
No me pienso perder sus otras dos novelas; Knockemstiff y El banquete celestial.
Siento predilección por estas narraciones que muestran la crudeza en la vida de sus gentes, tan duras y reales.
Si te atreves con este tipo de literatura donde prima el realismo sucio y visceral, la violencia y el fanatismo, este sin duda es tu libro y tu autor de cabecera, pero si crees que tanta sordidez y dureza es demasiado para ti, mejor abstenerse.

Eternamente a sus pies, Sr. Pollock ❤

▶ "Las personas son como los perros: en cuanto se ponen a escarbar, ya no quieren parar."

▶ "Le dio la impresión de que su vida entera, todo lo que había hecho, dicho o visto, lo había conducido a aquel momento: por fin a solas con los fantasmas de su infancia."

📖 Próxima lectura:
"La noche de los maniquís" - Stephen Graham Jones.

📚 https://www.facebook.com/LaLocadelosL... 📚

[Francesc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una novela extraordinaria hecha con retazos de historias personales, historias familiares, que, al final, confluyen en una única historia.

Los personajes me recuerdan a los "Cutter y Bone" de Newton Hornburg en lo que se refiere a la autodestrucción y, a pesar de todo, a sus ganas de vivir.

Hay un fenomenal retrato de la sociedad rural estadounidense de mediados del siglo XX. Los personajes están trabajados al detalle. Sus miedos, contradicciones, deseos, parafilias, etc. Todos ellos están perfilados a la perfección.

La violencia, la tristeza y la desesperanza están muy arraigadas en esta novela.
El autor lo narra todo con un estilo muy sencillo y directo y consigue que, al instante, conectes con los personajes y con cada una de las vidas presentadas y que viajes con ellos a través de sus pensamientos.


An extraordinary novel made of scraps of personal stories, family stories, which, in the end, come together in a single story.
The characters remind me of Newton Hornburg's "Cutter and Bone" in terms of self-destruction and, in spite of everything, their will to live.

There is a phenomenal portrait of mid-20th century American rural society. The characters are defined in detail. Their fears, contradictions, desires, paraphilias, etc. They are all perfectly outlined.
Violence, sadness and hopelessness are deeply rooted in this novel.

The author narrates everything in a very simple and direct style and makes you instantly connect with the characters and with each of the lives presented and travel with them through their thoughts.

[Zoeytron · Rating 5 out of 5]

A preacher who eats spiders, trying to strike his own parable with the church folk. His little talks with Jesus end up turning his deluded notions into full blown insanity.

A husband and wife comb the backroads picking up young male hitchhikers, all of them coming to an end in a true photo finish. The woman, thinking herself a slightly better class of trash than her husband, idly scratches her “jigger” bites and dreams of moving on without him.

A sheriff who recognizes that being the law in a backward county has its advantages.

A prayer log lies just inside the perimeter of the woods. Day after day, a husband saturates it with a sacrifice of blood. His own blood, the blood of a lamb, of fresh roadkill, of any breed of unfortunate stray that might cross his path. In his twisted and tormented logic, he fervently believes if he and his little boy pray loudly and long enough, The Cancer will be taken from his wife. The thing about that bloody prayer log, though, is that it just doesn’t work.

Unforgiving and disturbing, this one will have your skin crawling in nothing flat. Dark perfection.

[Ayman Gomaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

English & Arabic Review:

This book in one sentence

" It's like a cursed mirror that reveals how you will die; you know you shouldn't look but u look anyway ".

I kept reading till the end of it and don't know what kind of a book am i reading !!! but i feel the Message the author wanted to send even with the good ending .

It was disturbed \ Dark \ Violent

it's mix of " True Detective \ Top of the lake \ insomnia \ Se7en \ Natural Born Killers \ Monster " yea it's that disturbing even more with one message :

When u see that Netfilx filming it with a hell of a cast like this u get so curious , the film will be released in 16-9-2020

The book content of six parts :

Part 1 : Sacrifice * 5 stars *

the best one , contains the story of Willard Russell after coming back from world war II and his life after getting married of Charlotte and have a baby boy Arvin , show how the man can go of madness to save his loved once with his prayer log and blood sacrifice \ preacher with his crippled partner preaching while he thinks god abandon him and waiting for a sign .

Part 2 : On the hunt * 3 Stars *

Carl and Sandy Henderson a couple of married serial killers and their story and how they hunt hitchhikers and kill just for kill and take pictures with the body as a souvenir \ while lee sandy's brother Sheriff of Medina ,Ohio doing his job with prides and helping gangster get their work done .

Part 3 : orphans and ghosts * 4 Stars *

Arvin back to live with his grandmother , Earskell and Leanora , show the way he tries to be good but uses violence to defend himself and Leanora \ journey of Ray & Theodore around the country

Part 4 : Winter * 3 Stars *

Flashes of Carl & sandy past and the way they live together .

Part 5 : Preacher * 4 Stars *

One of the darkest parts , new preacher in town after the previous one got sick , preacher Teagardin using the lord words to trick young girls to his benefits while Arvin suspects him with massive tragic events .

Part 6 : serpents * 3 stars *

Carl & Sandy back on the hunt again while things go out of control .

Part 7 : Ohio * 4 Stars *

All characters aught in the middle of all this and things starts to blow away .

*****
The ending was good but the story was awkward and i guess the author wanted to show us how natural effects people .

Arabic Review :

كتاب من اكثر الكتب الذى كنت متشوق لها خاصة بعد ترشيحه من كثير انه من اقرب الكتب الى مسلسل True Detective
تم اصدار الفيلم 16-9-2020
و بعد شراء نتفيلكس لحقوق الكتاب و اختيار طاقم اكثر من ممتاز له " فى اعلى المراجعة " ازداد فصولى اكثر توقعت انى امام رواية مختلفة و ذات ابعاد فلسفية و ظلامية .

بالنسبة للسرد و اللغة كانت اكثر من رائعة و انتهيت من الرواية فى يومين خاصة ان الكاتب استطاع ان يجعلك متشوق لتعرف نهاية الشخصيات الرئيسية غير سرعة الاحداث و ايقاع الرواية ف لا ملل بها عل الاطلاق و لكن ..
على الجانب الاخر انا لم استطع فهم المغزى من القصة او دوافع بعد الشخصيات , نعم الكاتب اخرج اسوء ما فى صفات الانسان
الجشع \ الغضب

الكسل \ الطمع

السذاجة المبالغ بها \ الشهوة

معظم الخطايا المميتة

تقسمت فصول الرواية الى 6 اجزاء و احدثها من بعد الحرب العامية الثانية ال عام 1963
ثلاثة فصول عن

ويللورد و شارلوت : زوجين يعيشوا سويآ مع ابنهم ارفين حتى تصاب الام بالسرطان ف يبدا الزوج فى عمل المستحيل حتى التضحية بالدماء اعتقادآ منه ان هذا سوف يساعد زوجته عل الشفاء فى اكثر جزء استمتعت به عل الرغم من قتامته و نهايته المأسوية .

روى الكاهن و صديقه الكاهن العاجز ثيودور : كاهن يخطب و الاخر يلعب الموسيقى فى طريقة لجذب الناس احيانا بالموسيقى و احيانا بالحشرات حتى يظن ان الوحى و الرسالة من الله له لم تصل ف يبدا ب تصرفات مجنونة تؤدى الى نتائج ابشع .

ارفين و لينورا : ارفين راسل على الرغم من صغر سنة و طيبه قلبه و لكنه يلجا للعنف فى حل مشاكله و الدفاع عن اخته لينورا من المتنمرين

الكاهن بريستون : الكاهن الجديد فى المدينة و الذى يتخذ من قدرته عل اقناع الناس ب كلمات الرب ساتر لخداعه البنات الصغارى فى المدينة لتحقيق شهوته و مغزاه الحقيقى

: و الثلاث الفصول الاخرى عن

كارل و ساندى هندرسون : قتلة متسلسلين يترصدوا الناس من عل الطرقات ل يشبعوا غرائزهم و العبث ب اجسامهم و سرقتهم

لي بوديكر : شريف المقاطعة المرتشى الذى يساعد الخارجين عن القانون ل تحقيق اغراضهم و اغراضه ايضآ

الفصل الاخير :

عندما يجتمع طرق الشخصيات كلها اخيرا عل الطريق ل تكتب نهاية حكايات اكثر الشخصيات مضطربة نفسيا رايتها مؤخرأ .

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

The places described in this book are said to be located somewhere in Ohio. Small towns and highways connecting them to other small towns with convenience stores, schools, cornfields, dirt roads, churches, wood-paneled homes and their sheds. But it doesn't take you very long to know that this decor is just a façade for where you really are. The plants have withered, the dogs are skinny, all eyes are dead. Everything is thirsty. The pure thirst for water is numbed and buried in dust. Alcohol and blood are all that is left to appease the cruel tongues slithering in the dried-up maws and mouths. The only soft caress you're likely to get is that of a rare breeze that seems out of place in the rough landscape and flees just as soon as it arrived. The only color comes from reddish brown stains in the sand, the only sound comes from your own laboured breathing.

You are in Hell.

The Devil has taken a seat in his favorite throne: the stone-cold hearts of the people who roam this desert. Senseless violence goes hand in hand with outrageous sexual proclivities. As the Devil is steering everyone in desperate circles of debaucheries and murders, it is easy to be entertained by the spectacle but difficult to empathise with the grim cast of characters who are slowly casting off their human shell. The only warm, sweet sensation that is left in these arid lands is that of a possibility of revenge, the prospect of somehow ending this miserable display.

Some of the people have embraced the Devil willingly. Some have tried to stay ahead of him but were caught up in his remorseless swoop. Some have tried to confront him with dry decomposing Bibles and pitiful prayers to grey skies only to find themselves choking in the sand. Their tales and their vividly detailed backgrounds are what you'll find in this book.

The most interesting story came from the one who managed to stay behind the Devil, staying out of view and cleaning up the mess. The one who decided to have a staring contest with the abyss as it gazed back into him, unblinking. His own brand of emptiness is pitted against the endless depths of evil as the pages turn and the reader is swept away in this mesmerising story of a handful of good intentions in a world of evil. It's not hope that gets you through this desert, but the thrill of witnessing the wicked and the chance of beating the Devil at his own game while secretly enjoying his company.

Don't miss this journey.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Alone at last with the ghosts of his childhood.”

“The Devil all the Time” is an ugly, uncompromising book. Donald Ray Pollock has created an atmosphere that is dark, unrelenting, and devoid of hope. I would say that he exaggerates the atmosphere of the parts of southeast Ohio and West Virginia that he writes about, but he has lived there all his life, so who I am to say? I do live in central Ohio and have all of my life, and my belief is that there is a segment of society in that area that probably inspires the truth in Mr. Pollock’s novel. However, don’t mistake that segment of the population for the whole.
While reading this book I kept thinking of the film “No Country for Old Men”. It just put me in that vein. This text is not for those who dislike the ugly, dirty elements of human squalor depicted. This is not a book to read while eating.
As for the story and the writing…Mr. Pollock has managed to create a gripping narrative in which he weaves numerous plot threads and neatly brings them together as the novel concludes. That element of the text is well done, as is the fact that it spans well over 18 years and yet it is concise and moves along. The author covers that span of years quickly, and yet you never feel like he left anything out.
The characterizations are taut and are real, disgustingly so at times. This next sentence is not going to make sense… I detested many of these characters, but was drawn into their lives rather than judging them. I can’t really explain that, because if I knew these people in real life I know my judgment would fly and I would have to work very hard to keep it in check. I especially enjoyed the character of Arvin Russell, who is probably as close to a protagonist as this ensemble lead story gets. He is the only character who ends the novel with any kind of hope, and even then not much.
“The Washington Post” review of this book says it so well…"You may be repelled, you may be shocked, you will almost certainly be horrified, but you will read every last word.” Seriously, that sums it up for me. Can’t say it any better.
I have now read two of Mr. Pollock’s novels. I don’t think they are for everyone, and they get in your head and not in a good way. Nevertheless, I am glad that he is writing them. It is a voice we should have in American fiction.

[Lawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock's tales from a ghost town

“Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I learned that there are monsters among us at a fairly young age. On a bright spring morning around 1971, I was riding to Foster's Alabama, with a high school friend. There was a car, off the road, and stuck in a ditch.

John said we should pull off and help. But something didn't look right about it. One man stood at the front of the Caddy. Another stood by the trunk. As we approached, the man by the trunk looked at me. There are some people who have nothing behind their eyes. There is no conscience, or soul there, if you will.

I screamed at John to drive, even reaching to shove the steering wheel over to swerve us back on the roadway. It was a bit of good fortune.

Everyone loved Buddy Copeland, a big fireman, who was driving his pickup to go fishing on the Black Warrior River that morning. He had a winch on his truck. Being Buddy, he pulled over to help get the car out of the ditch. When they found him, it appeared he had decided to snack on a ham sandwich before heading on to fish. A blood soaked bit of it lay on the passenger seat by the door where the gun blast had blown it from his mouth. The men who killed him were named Turk and Alexander. They had no love for Buddy. He must have seen the body of the banker in the trunk of the Caddy they had hi-jacked earlier that morning. I watched their trial.

I grew up to hunt men and women who had no conscience, no soul behind the eyes. I was an Assistant District Attorney for almost 28 years. Unlike a lot of ADAs who swaggered around with their badge and a gun on their side, I carried a gun because of need.

Although most of my police friends favored a 9mm, I preferred a Walther PK .380. I was trained to shoot by the best shots in law enforcement. "Don't be a hero. Shoot for center body mass. Double tap. Shoot to kill. You don't, they'll kill you." I was a cop's ADA. I was good at it. I played to win. If I didn't think you were guilty, I refused to take the case. I backed up an officer during an investigation more than once. It was an honor.

My job was not done from a clean office. I went to the scene. I worked cases where sons killed parents for crack money, men shook babies to death, and jealous ex-husbands killed their ex-wives in front of the kids. The baby killer is on death row. When they slip him the needle, I'll be there as a witness.

Don't let Donald Ray Pollock fool you. Knockemstiff is a real place. It's a ghost town now. The nice name for the place is Shady Glen. Look at an Ohio Map from 1919, you won't find it. Look on a 1940 map, there it is. Pollock ought to know. He lived there before heading to Chillicothe to become a laborer at a paper mill for more than thirty years. After that he got an MFA and began to write. His first book is, you guessed it, Knockemstiff. Sherwood Anderson's advice to William Faulkner was good. "Write what you know." Otherwise, we might never have known about Yoknapatawpha County.

I've known places like Knockemstiff. I worked two homicided that ended up on Tuscaloosa's side of the County Line that separated us from Walker County. What began in Walker County ended up down on the Tiger Mine Strip Pit Road. It's a lonely place, where the maggots do their job if the body's not found soon enough.

As Pollock tells us, law enforcement didn't show up much in Knockemstiff. Neither did Walker County Law like to escort Tuscaloosa ADAs up on their Beat 10 road. It was a rough place. The people didn't trust outsiders. I took my own cop friends with me when I had to interview witnesses on Beat 10. They weren't any happier about it than I was.

The Devil All the Time begins idyllically enough. Willard Russell has survived war in the Pacific Theater in WWII. He's on his way home to Coal Creek, West Virginia to his parents home. But a stop in Meade, Ohio, leads him to a diner, the Wooden Spoon, where he meets a waitress named Charlotte. She's a woman he can't forget.

Although he returns to Coal Creek, he finds his mother has picked out a bride for him. Helen is an unattractive young woman. But Willard's mother had promised Helen's mother she'd look out after the poor thing when Helen's mother died.

Willard can't forget Charlotte, returns to Meade and marries her. They rent a house up in the hollers of Knockemsstiff from a cuckolded lawyer. They are happy. Willard and Charlotte have a son, Arvin Eugene. All's well until Charlotte gets the Cancer and Willard constructs an altar out of a fallen log. He and Arvin pray aloud there at the log for Charlotte's recovery. But their prayers are unanswered.

Willard must believe in an Old Testament God. If the prayers don't work by themselves, God must require blood sacrifice. Dogs, sheep, and larger game are strung up and bled to cover the prayer log in an offering satisfying to God. But if God is anywhere around, he's not in Knockemstiff.

Disconsolate from Charlotte's death, Willard cuts his throat at the prayer log, leaving Arvin Eugene an orphan. When Arvin reports his father's death to Deputy Leo Bodecker, he takes him to the bloody clearing in the woods.

"'Goodamn it, Boy,what the hell is this?'

"It's a prayer log,' Arvin said, his voice barely a whisper.

"What? A prayer log?'

Arvin stared at his father's body, 'But it don't work,' he said."

Arvin is sent to live with his grandparents back in Coal Creek. It seems he has a new sister, Leonore. She is the daughter of Helen, the woman Willard's mother had wanted him to marry.

Helen had taken up with a travelling preacher, Roy, who was accompanied by a paraplegic guitarist named Theodore. After Leonore's birth, Roy becomes convinced that if he could bring someone back from the dead, the audiences at his revival would grow by leaps and bounds. God must have been on vacation again. Leonore is just as much an orphan as Arvin Eugene. They come to view one another as brother and sister. Roy and Theodore take it on the lam after the Lazarus routine fails to take.

Years pass. Leo Bodecker, now sheriff, has a new set of problems on his hands. His sister Sandy is peddling her ass out of the restaurant where she waitresses. It seems his old opposition, the former Sheriff is rallying support for a new campaign. Sandy is complaint number one. Leo has got to do about his Sister's indiscriminate exercise of her sexuality, which is bounteously generous. The problem seems to be solved when Sandy settles down with Carl Henderson, a real shutterbug, who whisks Sandy away from town on extended vacations to add to his portfolio.

But there are no easy solutions in The Devil All the Time Carl's idea of a vacation is to wander the back roads picking up hitchhikers using Sandy as his bait. His favorite line of photography is taking photographs of Sandy in the arms of their unfortunate hitchikers, whom Carl dispatches with proficiency, documenting the whole sordid mess on film, developing his work in a private darkroom.

Meanwhile, down in Coal Creek, Arvin Eugene, protector of Leonore, discovers that the new Preacher had rather administer to the youngest of his congregation, including Leonore. When Pastor Teagarden impregnates Leonore, he rejects her, moving on to younger and more attractive congregants.

If God is present anywhere in he finds himself the incarnation of Arvin Eugene, who is packing his father Willard's Luger 9mm pistol, which he had traded for his own Nambu pistol taken as a souvenir ln the Pacific. Fleeing from Coal Creek, following meting out the Lord's vengeance on the misguided Reveverend, Arvin begins the long hitchike back to Knockemstiff.

In an almost incredible symmetry, who should stop to give him a lift but our happy serial killers Sandy and Carl. Arvin Eugene may be the most handsome model, the couple has ever scored. But Arvin is alert and most rescue himself from the shutterbug two which will not endear himself to sheriff Leo Bodecker.

Bodecker and Arvin take one last walk to the prayer log. Whether God is present, or the Devil laughs at one more triumph, the reader must discover for himself.

Pollock is a remarkable new voice in American literature. While he obviously shares comparison with Flannery O'Connor, none of O'Connor's theology is readily apparent in Pollock's work. Rather, picture William Gay decked out in clean carpenter's overalls, and read Provinces of Night or, among the most grotesque, Twilight. Here are the darkest aspects of Cormac McCarthy, and Tom Franklin as seen in Poachers.

Once again, in Donald Ray Pollock we have a novelist who writes that there are monsters among us and that to the monstrous, the norm is simply montrous.

[Dave Edmunds · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time."

The Devil all the Time by Donald Ray Pollock. I was recommended this book by a friend who absolutely raved about it. He couldn't say enough good things and said I had to read it. Well I did and guess what? It was bloody fantastic. The best book I've read in 2021 so far. So now I'm here to recommend it to you.

The story has a southern gothic flavour, although it takes place in rural Ohio, and is told from a number of POVs.   It's dark, bloody and brutal, with some very tough subject matter.  There's certain parts that will leave a stain on your soul.



"It's hard to live a good life," he said. "It seems like the Devil don't ever let up."

We have Arvin, a young man who suffers an early tragedy before being sent to live with his grandparents. He's the nearest we get to a protagonist in this one.  Although he tries to do the right thing he has no aversion to using violence to get there. Then there's Carl and Sandy, a couple with a passion for murder. Roy, a preacher who's wanted for homicide and takes up with a carnival.  And finally Sheriff Bodeker, a corrupt small town lawman who abuses his position at every opportunity.  The individual stories at first seem only loosely related, however the author weaves them together brilliantly as the story progresses and the characters collide in a breathtaking finish.

So what makes this novel special and why has it found a deep rooted place in my mind, if not my heart? First of all the pacing in this one is exceptional. It really does not let up for a second. Pollock uses short chapters and it works so well. There was numerous points while reading this, I looked ahead and saw it was a short chapter and squeezed another one in. Because there's exciting events taking place in each one, before you know it you've blitzed through the entire book and left feeling satisfied but wanting more. Like after a night with Margot Robbie.


Carl and Sandy

"Some people were born just so they could be buried."

The writing in this one, in terms of prose and use of literary techniques is not going to blow you away. Pollock is straight to the point and uses very few similes and metaphors. There's definitely no poetic language here.  But what he does is write with intensity and a level of authenticity I've rarely seen before. I know the author worked in a paper mill in Ohio up the age of fifty and was raised in Knockemstiff, the town in which the story takes place. It comes across that he's not just writing what he knows, but he's actually lived this life and it's spilling out all over the page.  The dialogue and tone just fit the narrative perfectly and it's beyond compelling. It really goes to show that an author doesn't have to show off with writing technique to tell a brilliant story.

"Grandma, there's a lot of no-good sonsofbitches out there."

"My Lord Alvin, why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it's true."

The character work in this one is also top draw. Pollock wants to give us the dark underbelly of humanity and he certainly does that with some fantastically crafted individuals that you won't forget in a hurry. There's lashings of dark humour, sinister vibes, outright vileness as well as a great deal of heart on offer here as the author gives us his insight into small town, rural America. Brilliantly done.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed this book. In fact that's a bit of an understatement. It's one of the best books I've read. Perfectly suited to my tastes and ticking all the boxes. Donald Ray Pollock has a unique voice that needs to be experienced. Just don't be expecting a feel good novel and you won't be disappointed. I'm giving this all the stars, every penny's worth. Thanks Donald Ray for this amazing story!


Donald Ray Pollock