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Deep in the heart
This is the story of love and murder in West Texas.
In modern Amarillo, the streets are named after the fallen heroes of the Alamo and the past pokes through like bones poorly covered; the romance of the six-gun hangs in the air of every back-alley lounge and violence flickers like heat lightning. They say that Amarillo is a town where the people are real friendly and will kill you.
They also say that nobody ever died of love, but there they are wrong. People do, and often. One of these people is about to die of it:
Grady Hornsby, a wild old boy with a crooked grin who tries to get along with people and can just about manage it, except with the Wild Turkey is in him; his best friend, Boone, thirty, newly divorced, guiltily in love with Grady’s girlfriend, and, despite all the evidence, an optimist; Rowena, the girlfriend in question, a modern woman determined to be independent, yet astonished at what she is willing to do to win love; and the young lady who is about to cross their paths, Sue Pam Drury, the very naive, very frustrated wife of a tycoon’s weak son, a woman whose sexuality is about to erupt in a most unpredictable way— and catapult them all into Texas legend.
What happens to them all, and why, is a story of frailty and folly and good intentions gone awry, of the power of legend and the human yearning for love... of the affairs that go on Deep in the Heart. Written in a vivid, bittersweet prose that fairly leaps off the page, it is a remarkable tale by a born storyteller, suffused with a sense of people and place, of the lives lived on the sea of sere, yellow grass and under the vast, starry Texas sky.
In modern Amarillo, the streets are named after the fallen heroes of the Alamo and the past pokes through like bones poorly covered; the romance of the six-gun hangs in the air of every back-alley lounge and violence flickers like heat lightning. They say that Amarillo is a town where the people are real friendly and will kill you.
They also say that nobody ever died of love, but there they are wrong. People do, and often. One of these people is about to die of it:
Grady Hornsby, a wild old boy with a crooked grin who tries to get along with people and can just about manage it, except with the Wild Turkey is in him; his best friend, Boone, thirty, newly divorced, guiltily in love with Grady’s girlfriend, and, despite all the evidence, an optimist; Rowena, the girlfriend in question, a modern woman determined to be independent, yet astonished at what she is willing to do to win love; and the young lady who is about to cross their paths, Sue Pam Drury, the very naive, very frustrated wife of a tycoon’s weak son, a woman whose sexuality is about to erupt in a most unpredictable way— and catapult them all into Texas legend.
What happens to them all, and why, is a story of frailty and folly and good intentions gone awry, of the power of legend and the human yearning for love... of the affairs that go on Deep in the Heart. Written in a vivid, bittersweet prose that fairly leaps off the page, it is a remarkable tale by a born storyteller, suffused with a sense of people and place, of the lives lived on the sea of sere, yellow grass and under the vast, starry Texas sky.
306 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 12, 2017
This is the book I was reading with my reading buddy Kirk when he tragically passed away. He was waiting to give his review so it wouldn't influence my thoughts or persuade me in a different direction. Oh how I would love to know his thoughts on this book and all the others we were to read together in the future. True to his word, he never wrote that review and the book remains on his reading shelf forever.
So about the book, this author likes to shock his reader. All the characters are unlikeable and have very few if any redeeming qualities. Parts of this book remind me of Daniel Woodrell's book The Death of Sweet Mister but not nearly as tightly written. As Kirk mentioned in some comments that it first starts out as a romance for men but then he thought he was too quick on that assessment. It's different but at the end I didn't feel too good about any of these crazy cats.
So about the book, this author likes to shock his reader. All the characters are unlikeable and have very few if any redeeming qualities. Parts of this book remind me of Daniel Woodrell's book The Death of Sweet Mister but not nearly as tightly written. As Kirk mentioned in some comments that it first starts out as a romance for men but then he thought he was too quick on that assessment. It's different but at the end I didn't feel too good about any of these crazy cats.
December 28, 2017
I count myself lucky: I probably never would’ve encountered Wyatt Wyatt if not for a goodreads friend. And that would’ve been tragic, because this guy really knew how to write. Set in modern Amarillo, Deep in the Heart plumbs the depths and dangers of love and lust in West Texas. Boone, just turned 30 and newly divorced, finds himself caught up in not one, but two love triangles (so a pentagram, I guess? Appropriate enough for this hell-on-wheels story). “Nobody ever died from love,” Boone’s mother used to tell him, but before it’s over, Boone just might prove her wrong. Especially if his best friend Grady Hornsby, a wild-ass “true Texan,” comes gunning for him.
The scene with Grady and the parrot was hilarious and perfect. Cartoonish and utterly human all at once.
Wyatt wrote sentences that begged to be underlined, but I couldn’t bring myself to mark the pages. So instead I scribbled them on any scrap of paper nearby. For example: “How is it we can believe we’re thinking clearly at the very moment we tunnel through obscurity, blind moles driven by desire, loving the darkness?” Well, damn—who hasn’t experienced exactly that? And what writer ever set it down so perfectly?
By turns bawdy and bittersweet, Deep in the Heart is an obscure masterpiece.
The scene with Grady and the parrot was hilarious and perfect. Cartoonish and utterly human all at once.
Wyatt wrote sentences that begged to be underlined, but I couldn’t bring myself to mark the pages. So instead I scribbled them on any scrap of paper nearby. For example: “How is it we can believe we’re thinking clearly at the very moment we tunnel through obscurity, blind moles driven by desire, loving the darkness?” Well, damn—who hasn’t experienced exactly that? And what writer ever set it down so perfectly?
By turns bawdy and bittersweet, Deep in the Heart is an obscure masterpiece.
October 19, 2022
Just like with Catching Fire, let’s say the same thing goes for this one: hilarious and sad and sweet and mad and lovely. And hot damn.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews