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Provinces of Night
It’s 1952. Thirty years before, E.F. Bloodworth gunned down a deputy and commenced a vagrant’s life of itinerant banjo picking, but he’s finally coming home. Two of his sons won’t be home to greet him: Warren lives a life of alcoholic philandering down in Alabama, and Boyd has gone to Detroit in vengeful pursuit of his wife and the peddler she ran off with. His third son, Brady, is still home, but he’s an addled soothsayer given to voodoo and bent on doing whatever it takes to keep E.F. from seeing the wife he abandoned. Only Fleming, E.F.’s grandson, is pleased with the old man’s homecoming, but Fleming’s life is soon to careen down an unpredictable path hewn by the beautiful Raven Lee Halfacre.
In the great Southern tradition of Faulkner, Styron, and Cormac McCarthy, William Gay wields a prose as evocative and lush as the haunted and humid world it depicts. Provinces of Night is a tale redolent of violence and redemption— a whiskey-scented, knife-scarred novel whose indelible finale is not an ending nearly so much as it is an apotheosis.
“An extremely seductive read.”–The Washington Post Book World
“Gay is unafraid to tackle the biggest of the big themes, nor does he shy away from the grand gesture that makes those themes manifest.”–The New York Times Book Review
“There is much to admire here: breathtaking, evocative writing and a dark, sardonic humor.”–USA Today
In the great Southern tradition of Faulkner, Styron, and Cormac McCarthy, William Gay wields a prose as evocative and lush as the haunted and humid world it depicts. Provinces of Night is a tale redolent of violence and redemption— a whiskey-scented, knife-scarred novel whose indelible finale is not an ending nearly so much as it is an apotheosis.
“An extremely seductive read.”–The Washington Post Book World
“Gay is unafraid to tackle the biggest of the big themes, nor does he shy away from the grand gesture that makes those themes manifest.”–The New York Times Book Review
“There is much to admire here: breathtaking, evocative writing and a dark, sardonic humor.”–USA Today
293 pages, Hardcover
First published December 26, 2000
156 people are currently reading
7983 people want to read
About the author
William Gay
34 books537 followersWilliam Elbert Gay was the author of the novels Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and Twilight and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. He was the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 352 reviews
October 30, 2018
I’m not sure how a book about such down and out characters – some of them violent, others bitter and unhinged, some vengeful, and others simply lost and lonely – could contain such beauty. And yet, it does. This southern gothic tale is refined and exquisitely written. Honestly, it was such a delightful surprise to discover the talents of William Gay, an author I had never read before this.
This is a story of the Bloodworth family. The name is fitting indeed. The old man, E.F., and his three sons, Warren, Boyd and Brady, and his grandson, Fleming are the men of the family. When E.F. took off decades ago, he left behind a wife and three sons without benefit of a father figure. Not that E.F. was much of a father – no, he was a whiskey-making, pistol-toting, formidable man that enjoyed picking his banjo and doing whatever it was that satisfied E.F. He was a legend in Ackerman’s Field long before he was sent off to the state penitentiary. His stories are still told on front porches across town. Now the old man feels his time is coming to an end and he wants to make amends with the family he deserted so long ago.
"These hours before first light were merciless. You could not go back to sleep and it was too early to get up and the things you had done or not done lay in your mind immovable as misshapen things you’d erected from stone. There was no give to these hours. They took no prisoners, made no compromises, and the things you had done could not be rationalized into anything save things you had done. The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth, its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shut of."
E.F. Bloodworth has packed up his guitar and his banjo and is headed back to Ackerman’s Field, where he will meet his grandson, Fleming, for the first time. Much like his father and uncles before him, Fleming knows all about abandonment. His mother fled town with a peddler and his father is dead-set on catching up with them and seeking his revenge. Now Fleming is alone in the little ramshackle house -alone with his books and his dreams of writing. At seventeen years old, he is sharp and philosophical. A kid I wished I could squeeze tight and tell him everything would be all right! He has a friend named Junior Albright, a guy that through a series of bumbles added much needed levity to a book that could otherwise have been very dark. Well, it is dark, but here and there are these bursts of hilarity that nearly had me in stitches! All of the characters are so deftly drawn and I was completely taken in by the whole bunch. The beautiful Raven Lee, the muddled yet kind-hearted Uncle Warren, and even the unbalanced and hostile, card-reading, hex-cursing, Uncle Brady.
I love music; I guess you could say we are a musical family – although not one of us earns a living this way. It’s something that we simply have to have in our lives to make us happy – the kiddos included. This book has a thread of music running throughout, and I loved this aspect - imagining these old-timers composing their songs, sitting in their rockers while crowds gathered round to listen.
"The music told itself, it made some obscure connection for which there were no words. The music was its own story, but a man could dip into the vast reservoir of folk and blues lines and phrases and images and construct his own story: though upon performing it and without it losing any relevance to his own life it now belonged to the audience as well… The old songs with juryrigged verses like bodies cobbled up out of bones from a thousand skeletons. Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left. Songs that treated the most desperate of loss with a dark sardonic humor… There was an eerie timelessness about it that said it could have been written a thousand years ago, or it could have been an unfinished song about events that had not yet played themselves out."
I suspect my review is meandering a bit. Plot-wise, the story ambles along at a leisurely pace. I say this in a positive way, as I found so much more to absorb than just the plot. It is a character-driven story that excels in highlighting the reality of the lives of these people. I could picture each and every one of them so vividly. I could hear the rhythm of their voices. Feel the pain of their sorrows. The tension heightens by book’s end and I was left with my own sadness that it was finished. I wasn’t quite ready to leave some of these characters just yet. A new book and author to grace my favorites shelf, Provinces of Night is one I highly recommend!
"Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty."
This is a story of the Bloodworth family. The name is fitting indeed. The old man, E.F., and his three sons, Warren, Boyd and Brady, and his grandson, Fleming are the men of the family. When E.F. took off decades ago, he left behind a wife and three sons without benefit of a father figure. Not that E.F. was much of a father – no, he was a whiskey-making, pistol-toting, formidable man that enjoyed picking his banjo and doing whatever it was that satisfied E.F. He was a legend in Ackerman’s Field long before he was sent off to the state penitentiary. His stories are still told on front porches across town. Now the old man feels his time is coming to an end and he wants to make amends with the family he deserted so long ago.
"These hours before first light were merciless. You could not go back to sleep and it was too early to get up and the things you had done or not done lay in your mind immovable as misshapen things you’d erected from stone. There was no give to these hours. They took no prisoners, made no compromises, and the things you had done could not be rationalized into anything save things you had done. The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth, its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shut of."
E.F. Bloodworth has packed up his guitar and his banjo and is headed back to Ackerman’s Field, where he will meet his grandson, Fleming, for the first time. Much like his father and uncles before him, Fleming knows all about abandonment. His mother fled town with a peddler and his father is dead-set on catching up with them and seeking his revenge. Now Fleming is alone in the little ramshackle house -alone with his books and his dreams of writing. At seventeen years old, he is sharp and philosophical. A kid I wished I could squeeze tight and tell him everything would be all right! He has a friend named Junior Albright, a guy that through a series of bumbles added much needed levity to a book that could otherwise have been very dark. Well, it is dark, but here and there are these bursts of hilarity that nearly had me in stitches! All of the characters are so deftly drawn and I was completely taken in by the whole bunch. The beautiful Raven Lee, the muddled yet kind-hearted Uncle Warren, and even the unbalanced and hostile, card-reading, hex-cursing, Uncle Brady.
I love music; I guess you could say we are a musical family – although not one of us earns a living this way. It’s something that we simply have to have in our lives to make us happy – the kiddos included. This book has a thread of music running throughout, and I loved this aspect - imagining these old-timers composing their songs, sitting in their rockers while crowds gathered round to listen.
"The music told itself, it made some obscure connection for which there were no words. The music was its own story, but a man could dip into the vast reservoir of folk and blues lines and phrases and images and construct his own story: though upon performing it and without it losing any relevance to his own life it now belonged to the audience as well… The old songs with juryrigged verses like bodies cobbled up out of bones from a thousand skeletons. Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left. Songs that treated the most desperate of loss with a dark sardonic humor… There was an eerie timelessness about it that said it could have been written a thousand years ago, or it could have been an unfinished song about events that had not yet played themselves out."
I suspect my review is meandering a bit. Plot-wise, the story ambles along at a leisurely pace. I say this in a positive way, as I found so much more to absorb than just the plot. It is a character-driven story that excels in highlighting the reality of the lives of these people. I could picture each and every one of them so vividly. I could hear the rhythm of their voices. Feel the pain of their sorrows. The tension heightens by book’s end and I was left with my own sadness that it was finished. I wasn’t quite ready to leave some of these characters just yet. A new book and author to grace my favorites shelf, Provinces of Night is one I highly recommend!
"Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty."
June 26, 2023
“I never wanted a lot of money out of it, or to be a literary lion. I just wanted to be a writer.” -- William Gay
I liked this novel by the late William Gay. I really liked it. It made me wonder why I had waited so long to read something by him. It isn’t like I had never heard of him. A friend recommended his short stories to me long before I joined Goodreads.
I liked it so well that by the time I was about half-way through Provinces of Night, which is his second novel, I ordered his first, The Long Home.
As a person, William Gay seemed to be unpretentious and down-to-earth, and he “just wanted to be a writer.” That urge was kindled when he was a teenager, sparked by a teacher who loaned him a copy of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, Look Homeward, Angel. He said that it was that book that exerted the greatest impact on his desire to become a writer.
That incident found its way into Provinces of Night:
“What did you think of that book that I gave you?
It’s the best book that I ever read.
There’s another book, a sort of sequel to it called Of Time and the River. It continues the story of Eugene Gant. There’s a very powerful scene where old man Gant dies. Would you like me to bring it to you?
Well, I’d like to read it. I could pick it up somewhere.
No, I’d like to bring it. I have a lot of books and books are better if you can share them.”
Gay’s first submitted manuscript was written in long hand. On the rejection slip that he received was a note that all submissions must be typewritten. He didn’t have a typewriter.
He also included that incident in his novel:
“Crossing the ditch before the hill began its steep ascent [Fleming] opened the flap of the envelope. The first thing he saw was his own handwriting, the second a note that had been paperclipped to his manuscript. We regret that we are unable to read handwritten manuscripts, someone in Atlanta had written. All submissions must be typewritten. He threw the manuscript into the ditch and went on up the hill but after a few steps returned and recovered the manila envelope and went on.”
William Elbert Gay (1941-2012), the son of a sharecropper and sawmill worker, was born in Hohenwald, Tennessee. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, he lived in New York and Chicago. In 1978, however, he returned to the area where he was born and lived there until his death.
For years he worked as a carpenter, drywall hanger, and painter, all the while composing stories in his head, stories that he wrote down on paper after work. The stories contained many episodes that were based on his life and experiences. He "just wanted to be a writer,” and he became a published one when two of his short stories were published in a literary magazine in 1998. He was fifty-seven years old.
In 1999, he published his first novel, The Long Home, which received good reviews and led to comparisons to Larry Brown and Barry Hannah. One critic wrote that the book didn’t feel like a debut novel. Perhaps that was because he had been practicing for forty years.
“There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway. The way they’d seemed not separate entities but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dimension over the provinces of night.”
Provinces of Night is set in 1952 in the Tennessee hills southeast of Nashville. It is where William Gay was born and the place he returned to in 1978. It is the story of three generations of males who were born and raised in that same area.
The two older generations are nonconformists who struggle to deal with forces that lead them astray and tear at the fabric of weakening family ties that are incapable of holding them. It began with a father who abandoned his wife and three sons twenty years ago and has now returned home in an effort to make amends, if it is not too late.
One son has affection for his father, but is struggling with his own life, made all the more difficult by his alcoholism. Another son is consumed by a desire for revenge, the need to track down his wife who deserted him and his son by running off with another man, and who isn’t concerned one way or the other with the return of his father. The youngest son, for reasons that become apparent, was affected the most by his father’s disappearance and then by his reappearance. He is the one who never married, the one who remained behind to care for his mother. But the experience has unmoored him to the degree that he places hexes on all who disappoint him. And many people disappoint him.
Then there is the youngest generation, represented by seventeen-year old Fleming, who, since his mother’s desertion and his father’s far-ranging search for her, lives alone. It is his coming of age that is the heart and soul of the story. Although it is never explicitly stated, he is the last chance for the family to redeem itself.
If one reads the publisher’s synopsis, or what I just wrote, one would think that this book is a real downer. Yes, there is darkness, but there is also much humor, especially when one Junior Albright makes his appearances. Without Junior, the story would be one of almost unalleviated sadness and despair. He might not be all bright, but he does display a degree of shrewdness when he finds himself in a tight spot, which is where he often finds himself.
The plot builds leisurely as the principal characters are established, but that's okay. The passages that describe the place and the people are lyrical and made me want to slow down and read them again.
“It was on a Saturday morning and there was a lot of folks stirring about. People haulin’ cotton into town on wagons to the gin. Folks come in on Saturday to trade. Saturday was a big day back then. Saturday was what got you through the week.”
“From the shade of the ivy-covered end of Itchy Mama Baker’s porch the old men in ladderback chairs and tilting Coke crates watched the hot blacktop that snaked up the grade toward Ackerman’s Field three miles away. They’d sit daylong and wait for something to happen, anything to happen, waiting for the road to entertain them.”
“What he’d seen of life had shown him that the world had little of comfort or assurance. He suspected that there were no givens, no map through the maze…. Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty.”
But once the characters are established the story picks up the pace and expertly alternates between dark despair and lighthearted humor. That is a mix that has always appealed to me, I suppose, because it aptly describes the lives of so many people.
Did I mention that I liked this book – really liked it -- so much so that it now has a place on my "favorites" shelf? It might have been my first William Gay novel, but it will not be the last. The Long Home is waiting on my shelf, but I don’t plan to keep it waiting much longer.
I liked this novel by the late William Gay. I really liked it. It made me wonder why I had waited so long to read something by him. It isn’t like I had never heard of him. A friend recommended his short stories to me long before I joined Goodreads.
I liked it so well that by the time I was about half-way through Provinces of Night, which is his second novel, I ordered his first, The Long Home.
As a person, William Gay seemed to be unpretentious and down-to-earth, and he “just wanted to be a writer.” That urge was kindled when he was a teenager, sparked by a teacher who loaned him a copy of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, Look Homeward, Angel. He said that it was that book that exerted the greatest impact on his desire to become a writer.
That incident found its way into Provinces of Night:
“What did you think of that book that I gave you?
It’s the best book that I ever read.
There’s another book, a sort of sequel to it called Of Time and the River. It continues the story of Eugene Gant. There’s a very powerful scene where old man Gant dies. Would you like me to bring it to you?
Well, I’d like to read it. I could pick it up somewhere.
No, I’d like to bring it. I have a lot of books and books are better if you can share them.”
Gay’s first submitted manuscript was written in long hand. On the rejection slip that he received was a note that all submissions must be typewritten. He didn’t have a typewriter.
He also included that incident in his novel:
“Crossing the ditch before the hill began its steep ascent [Fleming] opened the flap of the envelope. The first thing he saw was his own handwriting, the second a note that had been paperclipped to his manuscript. We regret that we are unable to read handwritten manuscripts, someone in Atlanta had written. All submissions must be typewritten. He threw the manuscript into the ditch and went on up the hill but after a few steps returned and recovered the manila envelope and went on.”
William Elbert Gay (1941-2012), the son of a sharecropper and sawmill worker, was born in Hohenwald, Tennessee. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, he lived in New York and Chicago. In 1978, however, he returned to the area where he was born and lived there until his death.
For years he worked as a carpenter, drywall hanger, and painter, all the while composing stories in his head, stories that he wrote down on paper after work. The stories contained many episodes that were based on his life and experiences. He "just wanted to be a writer,” and he became a published one when two of his short stories were published in a literary magazine in 1998. He was fifty-seven years old.
In 1999, he published his first novel, The Long Home, which received good reviews and led to comparisons to Larry Brown and Barry Hannah. One critic wrote that the book didn’t feel like a debut novel. Perhaps that was because he had been practicing for forty years.
“There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway. The way they’d seemed not separate entities but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dimension over the provinces of night.”
Provinces of Night is set in 1952 in the Tennessee hills southeast of Nashville. It is where William Gay was born and the place he returned to in 1978. It is the story of three generations of males who were born and raised in that same area.
The two older generations are nonconformists who struggle to deal with forces that lead them astray and tear at the fabric of weakening family ties that are incapable of holding them. It began with a father who abandoned his wife and three sons twenty years ago and has now returned home in an effort to make amends, if it is not too late.
One son has affection for his father, but is struggling with his own life, made all the more difficult by his alcoholism. Another son is consumed by a desire for revenge, the need to track down his wife who deserted him and his son by running off with another man, and who isn’t concerned one way or the other with the return of his father. The youngest son, for reasons that become apparent, was affected the most by his father’s disappearance and then by his reappearance. He is the one who never married, the one who remained behind to care for his mother. But the experience has unmoored him to the degree that he places hexes on all who disappoint him. And many people disappoint him.
Then there is the youngest generation, represented by seventeen-year old Fleming, who, since his mother’s desertion and his father’s far-ranging search for her, lives alone. It is his coming of age that is the heart and soul of the story. Although it is never explicitly stated, he is the last chance for the family to redeem itself.
If one reads the publisher’s synopsis, or what I just wrote, one would think that this book is a real downer. Yes, there is darkness, but there is also much humor, especially when one Junior Albright makes his appearances. Without Junior, the story would be one of almost unalleviated sadness and despair. He might not be all bright, but he does display a degree of shrewdness when he finds himself in a tight spot, which is where he often finds himself.
The plot builds leisurely as the principal characters are established, but that's okay. The passages that describe the place and the people are lyrical and made me want to slow down and read them again.
“It was on a Saturday morning and there was a lot of folks stirring about. People haulin’ cotton into town on wagons to the gin. Folks come in on Saturday to trade. Saturday was a big day back then. Saturday was what got you through the week.”
“From the shade of the ivy-covered end of Itchy Mama Baker’s porch the old men in ladderback chairs and tilting Coke crates watched the hot blacktop that snaked up the grade toward Ackerman’s Field three miles away. They’d sit daylong and wait for something to happen, anything to happen, waiting for the road to entertain them.”
“What he’d seen of life had shown him that the world had little of comfort or assurance. He suspected that there were no givens, no map through the maze…. Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty.”
But once the characters are established the story picks up the pace and expertly alternates between dark despair and lighthearted humor. That is a mix that has always appealed to me, I suppose, because it aptly describes the lives of so many people.
Did I mention that I liked this book – really liked it -- so much so that it now has a place on my "favorites" shelf? It might have been my first William Gay novel, but it will not be the last. The Long Home is waiting on my shelf, but I don’t plan to keep it waiting much longer.
October 14, 2022
I’m going to go with the best way I know to put this. If you took what I love about Cormac McCarthy, and what I love about Justified, and what I love about home, the center of that Venn diagram is this book.
Meaning, there wasn’t a pleasure center in my brain this didn’t light up like Cleveland. Meaning, if there were any folks I’d bring to life out of a book it might be the Bloodworths out of this one.
Meaning, there wasn’t a pleasure center in my brain this didn’t light up like Cleveland. Meaning, if there were any folks I’d bring to life out of a book it might be the Bloodworths out of this one.
November 15, 2018
Clifton, Tennessee and thereabouts. The year is 1952 and the story centers on E.F. Bloodworth, his progeny, and all their doin's. Within these pages you will find a houseful of clocks, but where time no longer matters. There is a woman who is stingy with her words, and the sound of a river as it talks to itself. Gathering places include a beer joint called Goblin's Knob serving Falstaff beer, and Itchy Mama's, where, if you dare, you can join in a "vicious cutthroat" game of Rook. A man sets himself to rewriting the Bible by omitting all the "begats" and "wherefores" so as to make it more understandable to regular folk.
I closed the cover of this book with a deep feeling of melancholy. It is well nigh impossible not to compare the writing to that of Cormac McCarthy, although I did not find this quite as dark. Boy howdy, what a storyteller!
I closed the cover of this book with a deep feeling of melancholy. It is well nigh impossible not to compare the writing to that of Cormac McCarthy, although I did not find this quite as dark. Boy howdy, what a storyteller!
October 4, 2018
It always makes my soul sing a bit to find an author who really understands the South, someone who can look at the depressing and seedy side and not make it seem composed of only depravity. Oh, William Gay finds the depravity, but he also sees the warmth, the desperation and the humor. I laughed hard, cringed a bit, and felt an emotional lump in my throat.
The Bloodworths of Tennessee are a hard-scrabble bunch. At least one of them is certifiably nuts, some drink too much, guns are a common part of their life, and the threads that bind them together are brittle. The patriarch, E.F., left years before, taking with him only a banjo and his music, but he is coming home, old and sick, and not everyone, particularly his son, Brady, is happy to see him again. In such a family, it is hard to know where loyalty should lie and what love truly is, and seventeen year-old Fleming has been dropped into this crazy bunch and has to try to find his feet and his life.
The story is great. I kept wishing life would leave me alone and let me read without interruption. But, beyond that, the skill of the writer is amazing.
He began to suspect another, deeper layer of time, a time of stone and cloud and tree to which the time of clocks and calendars was a gross mockery cobbled up by savages. He felt the ways of men fall from him like sundered shackles.
He commands his environment and his characters, and he causes you to feel the pain and angst and loneliness.
Before she shared his bed, life had been pointless, but now it had become unbearable. She had appeared from nowhere and returned to it, but she’d taken over his life, left with a lien on his body, a mortgage on his soul.
The passage from which he takes the novel’s title read more like poetry than prose:
There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway. The way they’d seemed not separate entities but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dominion over the provinces of night.
I could quote dozens of passage that rise off the page and stand before you with body, corporeal somehow, vividly real.
There was a ceiling fan turning above him and he lay watching light play on the revolving blade. His life had honed itself down to a finite number of revelations of a metal blade through dead air.
I guess it is evident that I found this book magical, riveting, starkly real. My thanks once again to The Southern Literary Trail for introducing me to another superb writer that I would have completely missed otherwise.
Finally, Why was I not surprised to find that Kirk Smith gave this 5-stars? I so often wish I had dropped everything I was doing and read all the books he suggested to me right away. I miss him.
The Bloodworths of Tennessee are a hard-scrabble bunch. At least one of them is certifiably nuts, some drink too much, guns are a common part of their life, and the threads that bind them together are brittle. The patriarch, E.F., left years before, taking with him only a banjo and his music, but he is coming home, old and sick, and not everyone, particularly his son, Brady, is happy to see him again. In such a family, it is hard to know where loyalty should lie and what love truly is, and seventeen year-old Fleming has been dropped into this crazy bunch and has to try to find his feet and his life.
The story is great. I kept wishing life would leave me alone and let me read without interruption. But, beyond that, the skill of the writer is amazing.
He began to suspect another, deeper layer of time, a time of stone and cloud and tree to which the time of clocks and calendars was a gross mockery cobbled up by savages. He felt the ways of men fall from him like sundered shackles.
He commands his environment and his characters, and he causes you to feel the pain and angst and loneliness.
Before she shared his bed, life had been pointless, but now it had become unbearable. She had appeared from nowhere and returned to it, but she’d taken over his life, left with a lien on his body, a mortgage on his soul.
The passage from which he takes the novel’s title read more like poetry than prose:
There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway. The way they’d seemed not separate entities but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dominion over the provinces of night.
I could quote dozens of passage that rise off the page and stand before you with body, corporeal somehow, vividly real.
There was a ceiling fan turning above him and he lay watching light play on the revolving blade. His life had honed itself down to a finite number of revelations of a metal blade through dead air.
I guess it is evident that I found this book magical, riveting, starkly real. My thanks once again to The Southern Literary Trail for introducing me to another superb writer that I would have completely missed otherwise.
Finally, Why was I not surprised to find that Kirk Smith gave this 5-stars? I so often wish I had dropped everything I was doing and read all the books he suggested to me right away. I miss him.
October 17, 2015
I loved everything about this novel, but I'd especially recommend it to people who prefer lyrical writing and character-driven storytelling over a thrill-filled plot. The story itself is good, but it takes the more scenic route home at times and sort of floats around in a way that makes it all feel a bit meditative. I actually loved it for that drowsy quality and read it slowly over several days.
Provinces of Night is simultaneously a coming-of-age story, a search for redemption and reparation, a comedy, a tragedy, and a history of Fleming Bloodworth's extremely dysfunctional family. Gay's lush prose borders on poetry and his characters are so realistically developed that you find yourself suspecting that they were based on real people. Some of it is bright and laugh out loud funny - especially the episodes with Fleming's friend Junior Albright (who is not at all bright) and his Uncle Warren - but it's also dark and deeply tragic. What ties it all together is Gay's Gothic tone and painterly writing style. Masterpiece quality.
"The sky was absolutely cloudless and so blue it looked transparent and against it a wave of blackbirds shifted shapeless as smoke.”
April 23, 2022
I don’t write reviews.
This is a real classic of southern gothic. Gay actually mentions one of my favourites, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote. The two books are similar in feeling and pacing and thickness of atmosphere. Also I could feel his love of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree (another favourite of mine). Early Times indeed!
I was drawn into his world and enjoyed being there. The characters weren’t happy and misfortune abounded, but I didn’t feel run down by the heaviness of it all. Hope and chance and luck never abandoned these people. They could better themselves if they tried. I didn’t even mind when they didn’t.
The only issue I have is with the last few chapters. I feel like some of the set-ups weren’t followed through and other stories were abandoned entirely (i.e. Boyd). The characters of E. F. and Julia could have been explored much, much more. They were quite interesting yet we never even scratched the surface, especially with Julia.
“These hours before first light were merciless. You could not go back to sleep and it was too early to get up. And the things you had done or not done, lay in your mind, immovable as misshapen things you had erected from stone. There was no give to these hours. They took no prisoners, made no compromises. And the things you had done could not be rationalized into anything, save, things you had done. The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth. Its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shod of.”
This is a real classic of southern gothic. Gay actually mentions one of my favourites, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote. The two books are similar in feeling and pacing and thickness of atmosphere. Also I could feel his love of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree (another favourite of mine). Early Times indeed!
I was drawn into his world and enjoyed being there. The characters weren’t happy and misfortune abounded, but I didn’t feel run down by the heaviness of it all. Hope and chance and luck never abandoned these people. They could better themselves if they tried. I didn’t even mind when they didn’t.
The only issue I have is with the last few chapters. I feel like some of the set-ups weren’t followed through and other stories were abandoned entirely (i.e. Boyd). The characters of E. F. and Julia could have been explored much, much more. They were quite interesting yet we never even scratched the surface, especially with Julia.
“These hours before first light were merciless. You could not go back to sleep and it was too early to get up. And the things you had done or not done, lay in your mind, immovable as misshapen things you had erected from stone. There was no give to these hours. They took no prisoners, made no compromises. And the things you had done could not be rationalized into anything, save, things you had done. The past was bitter and dry and ashes in his mouth. Its bone arms clasped him like some old desiccated lover he could not be shod of.”
December 27, 2019
Το Provinces of Night το εντάσσω σε μια λογοτεχνία Αμερικάνικη τραχιά, επιθετική και γεμάτη τεστοστερόνη, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή λεπτή, διεισδυτική. Στο νου μου, εκεί που γίνονται άλλοτε άτακτα, άλλοτε με μεγαλύτερη συνοχή, κατηγοριοποιήσεις, ο William Gay γράφει βιβλία που ταιριάζουν με αυτά των Donald Ray Pollock και Jim Thomson: η Αμερικάνικη επαρχία, είτε οι Μεσοδυτικές πολιτείες είτε ο Νότος, δημιουργούν ένα σκηνικό μέσα στο οποίο οι ήρωες ζούνε το καθημερινό τους δράμα. Σπάνια κάνουν όνειρα, ο μικρόκοσμός τους τους τραβάει σαν βάλτος, ενώ και ονειροπόλοι θα καταφέρουν να ξεφύγουν μόνο μέσα από έναν ορυμαγδό πόνου και τσαλαπατήματος. Εγώ, πάντως, πολύ απολαμβάνω κάτι τέτοια.
Υπάρχει κάτι κοινό με αυτούς τις συγγραφείς, όπως ο ωμός τρόπος με τον οποίο πολλοί χαρακτήρες τσακίζονται στην ζωή τους ή ζουν σε μια ημι-άγρια κατάσταση και το χιούμορ. Ίσως να είναι ένας τρόπος έκφρασης που να φαίνεται σε εμάς αστείος, ή ίσως είναι η διαταραγμένη αίσθηση του αστείου που έχω εγώ - πάντως οι "βλάχοι" φαίνεται να εκφράζονται με μια πηγαία καυστικότητα, να υπογραμμίζουν τα κακώς κείμενα σε στιγμές αναπάντεχης ενδοσκόπησης, ενώ την ίδια στιγμή οι σελίδες είναι διάχυτες από μια αρρενωπότητα που για στιγμές μεταδίδεται και στον αναγνώστη.
Ο Γκέι γράφει με έναν πολύ χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο. Είναι ταλαντούχος, αλλά σε στιγμές η σύνταξη σα να χορεύει, ίσως εν είδει μιας άτυπης ποιητικότητας. Δίνει την εντύπωση ανθρώπου που με κάθε του λέξη μαθαίνει να γράφει, αγνοώντας τις συμβάσεις της γραφής. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι μια απολαυστική γλώσσα, που ουδέποτε υποπίπτει στις προχειρότητες των κλισέ εκφράσεων και προσεγγίσεων.
Ο Γκέι πέθανε το 2012, έχοντας δημιουργήσει μια δική του, προσωπική γωνιά στην λογοτεχνία και αφήνοντας πίσω του βιβλία που περιμένω με λαχτάρα να πιάσω στα χέρια μου.
Υπάρχει κάτι κοινό με αυτούς τις συγγραφείς, όπως ο ωμός τρόπος με τον οποίο πολλοί χαρακτήρες τσακίζονται στην ζωή τους ή ζουν σε μια ημι-άγρια κατάσταση και το χιούμορ. Ίσως να είναι ένας τρόπος έκφρασης που να φαίνεται σε εμάς αστείος, ή ίσως είναι η διαταραγμένη αίσθηση του αστείου που έχω εγώ - πάντως οι "βλάχοι" φαίνεται να εκφράζονται με μια πηγαία καυστικότητα, να υπογραμμίζουν τα κακώς κείμενα σε στιγμές αναπάντεχης ενδοσκόπησης, ενώ την ίδια στιγμή οι σελίδες είναι διάχυτες από μια αρρενωπότητα που για στιγμές μεταδίδεται και στον αναγνώστη.
Ο Γκέι γράφει με έναν πολύ χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο. Είναι ταλαντούχος, αλλά σε στιγμές η σύνταξη σα να χορεύει, ίσως εν είδει μιας άτυπης ποιητικότητας. Δίνει την εντύπωση ανθρώπου που με κάθε του λέξη μαθαίνει να γράφει, αγνοώντας τις συμβάσεις της γραφής. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι μια απολαυστική γλώσσα, που ουδέποτε υποπίπτει στις προχειρότητες των κλισέ εκφράσεων και προσεγγίσεων.
Ο Γκέι πέθανε το 2012, έχοντας δημιουργήσει μια δική του, προσωπική γωνιά στην λογοτεχνία και αφήνοντας πίσω του βιβλία που περιμένω με λαχτάρα να πιάσω στα χέρια μου.
November 3, 2018
Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty.
Bloodworth is a name Dickens might have used for a protagonist, had he been born into Southern rural poverty in the wake of the Great Depression. It's a name that smartly summarizes the late William Gay's work; the taking and giving of life, the unshakable dividends of violent acts, and the ties that bind families across years and miles: the true worth of one's own blood, could such a measure be taken. Alternatively oppressive and optimistic, depressing and uplifting, deadly serious and hilarious, and when you finish you take a deep contented breath, lingering over the final pages unable to let go of these people whose lives have become so important to you, and perhaps you flip back through the pages until you arrive again at the beginning and start over.
Bloodworth is a name Dickens might have used for a protagonist, had he been born into Southern rural poverty in the wake of the Great Depression. It's a name that smartly summarizes the late William Gay's work; the taking and giving of life, the unshakable dividends of violent acts, and the ties that bind families across years and miles: the true worth of one's own blood, could such a measure be taken. Alternatively oppressive and optimistic, depressing and uplifting, deadly serious and hilarious, and when you finish you take a deep contented breath, lingering over the final pages unable to let go of these people whose lives have become so important to you, and perhaps you flip back through the pages until you arrive again at the beginning and start over.
January 8, 2022
I continue to be in awe of William Gay. His gorgeous, evocative prose isn't just to be read- it's to be breathed in, in all its whiskey scented, Southern Gothic malevolent glory. You will want to race through the pages, to drink deeply, but will hold yourself back....to treasure his words, to savor, and let the scent linger.
And laugh! Oh how you'll laugh!
Hellfire! he is good!!!
And laugh! Oh how you'll laugh!
Hellfire! he is good!!!
October 4, 2018
"Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood on your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty".
What can be said about an author who writes lines like that? Not just one or two, but a whole novel? "A gift of profound and appalling beauty" is actually a perfect description of this book. I'll leave the synopsis to Goodreads and just tell you what I experienced while reading.
I was concurrently walking in the shoes of Fleming Bloodworth, a 17 year old boy trying to make some sense out of life from reading books and observing people around him, and E.F.,his grandfather, trying to come to terms with a hard-lived life, bad decisions, and returning to his home to die. There are other members of this family, some of them crazy, drunk, violent, confused, but all of them trying to get by day to day in the best way they knew how. Junior Allbright was a family friend, Jack of all Trades, master of none character whose mess-ups provided a lot of humor. There was a lot of humor here in the very real dialogue between these people, and in their circumstances, even, maybe most especially, when things seemed hopeless. I shouldn't refer to them as characters, since they were very real to me, and I'm going to miss them, until I read this book again, which I most certainly will do.
I have read "The Long Home" and "Twilight" and loved them both, but this is Gay's masterpiece. It is magnificent and it is beautiful.
What can be said about an author who writes lines like that? Not just one or two, but a whole novel? "A gift of profound and appalling beauty" is actually a perfect description of this book. I'll leave the synopsis to Goodreads and just tell you what I experienced while reading.
I was concurrently walking in the shoes of Fleming Bloodworth, a 17 year old boy trying to make some sense out of life from reading books and observing people around him, and E.F.,his grandfather, trying to come to terms with a hard-lived life, bad decisions, and returning to his home to die. There are other members of this family, some of them crazy, drunk, violent, confused, but all of them trying to get by day to day in the best way they knew how. Junior Allbright was a family friend, Jack of all Trades, master of none character whose mess-ups provided a lot of humor. There was a lot of humor here in the very real dialogue between these people, and in their circumstances, even, maybe most especially, when things seemed hopeless. I shouldn't refer to them as characters, since they were very real to me, and I'm going to miss them, until I read this book again, which I most certainly will do.
I have read "The Long Home" and "Twilight" and loved them both, but this is Gay's masterpiece. It is magnificent and it is beautiful.
December 10, 2021
But blood is never left up to you, blood will call to blood. You can't deny your own kin.
Fleming's mother has run away, and his father is off tracking her down, leaving the teenager to fend for himself . . . and have some adventures.
It took me a while to get into this one - Gay's writing style is a bit overwhelming, and his lack of quotation marks annoyed me, but by the time the final pages rolled around, I hated to see it all end. Here is some fine Southern literature, mellowed with sweet bourbon tones, but prickly and tough. From what I've read of Gay's life, this seems as though it might be semi-autobiographical.
And, I love this bit:
I seen a pretty woman in a red dress, the old man had said once. And then I seen her take it off. What else is there?
Fleming's mother has run away, and his father is off tracking her down, leaving the teenager to fend for himself . . . and have some adventures.
It took me a while to get into this one - Gay's writing style is a bit overwhelming, and his lack of quotation marks annoyed me, but by the time the final pages rolled around, I hated to see it all end. Here is some fine Southern literature, mellowed with sweet bourbon tones, but prickly and tough. From what I've read of Gay's life, this seems as though it might be semi-autobiographical.
And, I love this bit:
I seen a pretty woman in a red dress, the old man had said once. And then I seen her take it off. What else is there?
November 26, 2014
This is about as close to a perfect book as I can imagine.
William Gay is/was a wordsmith of the highest caliber on equal footing with greats like O'Connor, Faulkner, and Wolfe.
Vivid, complex characters, exquisite prose, compelling story, and a tragic irony woven throughout...what more can a reader ask for?
The fact that this book only has 680 ratings proves to me that a book's success/popularity often has little to do with how good it really is. Like a number of greats, I think Gay's talent/accomplishments will only be acknowledged long after his death.
Would recommend to anyone who appreciates literature (high-quality writing and storytelling), especially but not exclusively those who enjoy the southern Gothic genre.
William Gay is/was a wordsmith of the highest caliber on equal footing with greats like O'Connor, Faulkner, and Wolfe.
Vivid, complex characters, exquisite prose, compelling story, and a tragic irony woven throughout...what more can a reader ask for?
The fact that this book only has 680 ratings proves to me that a book's success/popularity often has little to do with how good it really is. Like a number of greats, I think Gay's talent/accomplishments will only be acknowledged long after his death.
Would recommend to anyone who appreciates literature (high-quality writing and storytelling), especially but not exclusively those who enjoy the southern Gothic genre.
October 27, 2018
Do you have a clear idea of what makes a Southern Gothic novel? I didn't before. I do now. Macabre tone, deeply flawed characters, a dash of voodoo, a derelict setting, sinister events, poverty, crime and violence. All this is delivered in the novel, but adjectives just don't draw the picture as well as Gay's story does.
The first half of the novel didn't deliver; the second half did. The first half is terribly slow. The momentum builds at the end.
The author often doesn't clarify who he is speaking of. You think it is one person only to discover it is another. Very annoying, confusing and difficult to follow. By the books end you do end up understanding though. With the change of a paragraph the story can shift to a new person and place. You are given no warning and the characters are not necessarily specified; they are referred to as he or she! I found this annoying because the information I had just absorbed had been associated with the wrong individual. Rewinding and re-listening in an audiobook is a pain.
Some of the lines are really good, and that is what kept me reading!
Had it not been for the end I would never have given the book three stars! It is not a particularly neat ending but satisfying nevertheless. I understand the characters. I understand what happened. After struggling so hard this is in itself an achievement. The book is about a father, his three sons and two grandsons. Their women too. Messy relationships. Not all bad, but certainly not all good. Remember, this is a Southern Gothic novel!
I hated the narration by Dick Hill, but as usual this does not affect my rating. When I listen to his narration I get the feeling that he thinks he is doing a stupendous dramatization. Others like theatrics; I don't. I had to think of the words and close out what I heard. His chuckles drove me batty.
The first half of the novel didn't deliver; the second half did. The first half is terribly slow. The momentum builds at the end.
The author often doesn't clarify who he is speaking of. You think it is one person only to discover it is another. Very annoying, confusing and difficult to follow. By the books end you do end up understanding though. With the change of a paragraph the story can shift to a new person and place. You are given no warning and the characters are not necessarily specified; they are referred to as he or she! I found this annoying because the information I had just absorbed had been associated with the wrong individual. Rewinding and re-listening in an audiobook is a pain.
Some of the lines are really good, and that is what kept me reading!
Had it not been for the end I would never have given the book three stars! It is not a particularly neat ending but satisfying nevertheless. I understand the characters. I understand what happened. After struggling so hard this is in itself an achievement. The book is about a father, his three sons and two grandsons. Their women too. Messy relationships. Not all bad, but certainly not all good. Remember, this is a Southern Gothic novel!
I hated the narration by Dick Hill, but as usual this does not affect my rating. When I listen to his narration I get the feeling that he thinks he is doing a stupendous dramatization. Others like theatrics; I don't. I had to think of the words and close out what I heard. His chuckles drove me batty.
November 30, 2021
Shame on the publisher of my edition for giving away the entire book in its back-cover summary!
I'd probably be more outraged if the plot actually mattered much here. This lacks the narrative focus and urgency of Twilight (the first and only other William Gay novel I've read so far). There's no creepy undertaker like Fenton Breece or charismatic villain like Granville Sutter. Where that novel reveled unabashedly in its Gothic excesses, this was more.... Gothic Lite? And while that took me some getting used to at first, I ended up loving this novel every bit as much!
This reads more like a collection of vignettes and short stories set in Tennessee during the early 1950's, loosely tied together by an aging father's unwelcome homecoming thirty years after abandoning his wife and three sons following a violent encounter with the law.
To his 17-year-old grandson Fleming, the returning patriarch seems like a quiet but friendly old man just trying to make peace with his troubled past, nothing like the violent, legendary outlaw he's heard so many stories about growing up. (Side note: If I was casting a cinematic adaptation and the actor wasn't already deceased, I'd totally call up Harry Dean Stanton to play E.F. Bloodworth).
This is a novel that somehow manages to feel both epic and intimate at the same time. There are grand Gothic themes including generational curses, the duties and constraints of family bonds, and the sins of a father visited upon his own sons. But on a smaller, quieter level it's simply the story of deeply flawed and fractured human beings just trying their best to get by and find some light and meaning in a dark, troubled world.
Of course running throughout all of this is a potent, pervasive melancholy and nostalgia for a very particular Time and Place that no longer exists. I've never done anything more than briefly drive through the state of Tennessee, but there were paragraphs in this novel that almost had me sobbing over the loss of the state's past generations and families and towns, along with their triumphs and tragedies and legends.
Reading William Gay takes me back to listening to my Grandpa's stories of growing up during the Great Depression in rural Ohio, the wretched poverty and pretty women and petty crimes and violent bar-brawls - and that's probably the highest compliment I could ever give a writer.
Like my Grandpa's stories, Gay's rich, evocative writing is like a time machine transporting me back to small-town (white) America in the early 20th century. I've encountered very few writers who are able to bring to life the sights and smells and sounds of a specific place and moment in time as vividly and effortlessly as William Gay is able to do in just a brief sentence or two.
This is far from a perfect novel. The meandering (lack of) structure grew frustrating at times, a couple of the main characters felt underdeveloped (Junior Albright, especially), and the resolutions to a couple of the main character arcs felt a bit rushed and unearned at the end. But the overall rich characterization and hypnotically beautiful prose is just so damn good that I can't in good conscience rate this anything less than 5 stars.
One last observation: Descriptions like "dark," "melancholy," "Gothic," "haunting," etc. get tossed around a lot when discussing Gay's work, all apt descriptions to be sure. But what often gets overlooked in these characterizations is just how piss-your-pants FUNNY he can be! This humor is frequently expressed through the dry, crackling dialogue, which I swear in Gay's skilled hands feels just like eavesdropping sometimes.
I'd probably be more outraged if the plot actually mattered much here. This lacks the narrative focus and urgency of Twilight (the first and only other William Gay novel I've read so far). There's no creepy undertaker like Fenton Breece or charismatic villain like Granville Sutter. Where that novel reveled unabashedly in its Gothic excesses, this was more.... Gothic Lite? And while that took me some getting used to at first, I ended up loving this novel every bit as much!
This reads more like a collection of vignettes and short stories set in Tennessee during the early 1950's, loosely tied together by an aging father's unwelcome homecoming thirty years after abandoning his wife and three sons following a violent encounter with the law.
To his 17-year-old grandson Fleming, the returning patriarch seems like a quiet but friendly old man just trying to make peace with his troubled past, nothing like the violent, legendary outlaw he's heard so many stories about growing up. (Side note: If I was casting a cinematic adaptation and the actor wasn't already deceased, I'd totally call up Harry Dean Stanton to play E.F. Bloodworth).
This is a novel that somehow manages to feel both epic and intimate at the same time. There are grand Gothic themes including generational curses, the duties and constraints of family bonds, and the sins of a father visited upon his own sons. But on a smaller, quieter level it's simply the story of deeply flawed and fractured human beings just trying their best to get by and find some light and meaning in a dark, troubled world.
Of course running throughout all of this is a potent, pervasive melancholy and nostalgia for a very particular Time and Place that no longer exists. I've never done anything more than briefly drive through the state of Tennessee, but there were paragraphs in this novel that almost had me sobbing over the loss of the state's past generations and families and towns, along with their triumphs and tragedies and legends.
Reading William Gay takes me back to listening to my Grandpa's stories of growing up during the Great Depression in rural Ohio, the wretched poverty and pretty women and petty crimes and violent bar-brawls - and that's probably the highest compliment I could ever give a writer.
Like my Grandpa's stories, Gay's rich, evocative writing is like a time machine transporting me back to small-town (white) America in the early 20th century. I've encountered very few writers who are able to bring to life the sights and smells and sounds of a specific place and moment in time as vividly and effortlessly as William Gay is able to do in just a brief sentence or two.
This is far from a perfect novel. The meandering (lack of) structure grew frustrating at times, a couple of the main characters felt underdeveloped (Junior Albright, especially), and the resolutions to a couple of the main character arcs felt a bit rushed and unearned at the end. But the overall rich characterization and hypnotically beautiful prose is just so damn good that I can't in good conscience rate this anything less than 5 stars.
One last observation: Descriptions like "dark," "melancholy," "Gothic," "haunting," etc. get tossed around a lot when discussing Gay's work, all apt descriptions to be sure. But what often gets overlooked in these characterizations is just how piss-your-pants FUNNY he can be! This humor is frequently expressed through the dry, crackling dialogue, which I swear in Gay's skilled hands feels just like eavesdropping sometimes.
June 4, 2017
I wish I could be sitting on the porch listening to E.F. play his banjo right now. E.F. is a character not soon to be forgotten, similar to Larry Brown's Wade (see the books "Joe" and "Fay"). Both characters are old men doing scandalous acts - some funny and some not - but unforgettable nonetheless.
The Provinces of Night is another excellent book by William Gay. He is soon becoming my favorite. This story encompasses so much that this review will not do it justice. I simply loved it. I loved the characters, the setting, and the language. Gay certainly had a talent with the written word. If I highlighted every sentence that struck me most of the book would be underlined.
But what took me most by surprise was the humor which was not as profound in his previous book "The Long Home". There were several parts that had me in tears - literally. My favorite was the disastrous account of Fleming driving Warren and his "accountant". Downright hilarious. I was reading at work and couldn't stop laughing:
Now you're catchin on, Warren said. This flat black thing, I think that's what we're supposed to be drivin on. These woods and shit, I believe I'd just try to stay out of them as much as I could.
If you're a fan of the Dirty South you need to read William Gay.
Thank you Still for graciously sending me your extra copy. I cherished every word and will certainly keep to read again in the future.
The Provinces of Night is another excellent book by William Gay. He is soon becoming my favorite. This story encompasses so much that this review will not do it justice. I simply loved it. I loved the characters, the setting, and the language. Gay certainly had a talent with the written word. If I highlighted every sentence that struck me most of the book would be underlined.
But what took me most by surprise was the humor which was not as profound in his previous book "The Long Home". There were several parts that had me in tears - literally. My favorite was the disastrous account of Fleming driving Warren and his "accountant". Downright hilarious. I was reading at work and couldn't stop laughing:
Now you're catchin on, Warren said. This flat black thing, I think that's what we're supposed to be drivin on. These woods and shit, I believe I'd just try to stay out of them as much as I could.
If you're a fan of the Dirty South you need to read William Gay.
Thank you Still for graciously sending me your extra copy. I cherished every word and will certainly keep to read again in the future.
May 11, 2019
Poisonous snakes, angry hornets and cathead biscuits. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - no true Southern Gothic novel is complete without them. But that’s where the similarity of this book to other gothic novels I’ve read ends. ‘Provinces Of Night’ is in a class of its own, maybe even a genre of its own - ‘Poetic Goth’ perhaps: “Came then plague days of desolation when loss ravaged him like a fever. The house was empty and dead without her. A place of ice, of perpetual winds.” ~ Fleming Bloodworth
Wow.
This is my first novel by William Gay, and the man was a maestro at creating believable backwoods Southern characters and realistic dialogue. I could picture these people - their dusty clothes, their weathered skin, their beat-up cars. I could hear their voices - “ort” for ought; “kindly” for kind of; “ever” for every. Set in the 1950’s in a corner of Tennessee, “70 miles back from Nashville,” this story leads us down the twisted path of the Bloodworth family where we meet patriarch E.F. Bloodworth; his sons Brady, Boyd and Warren; and his grandsons Fleming and Neal. Gay throws a stellar side character into this mix - the always fumbling but hilarious Junior Albright. Women are scattered throughout the story, but they are not the focus - they lie shimmering in the background trying to survive these men the best they can. Because these are men who follow their own path - for good or ill.
One last requirement for a genuine Southern Gothic novel . . . the apocalyptic ending. And even in this, Gay writes pure poetry: “There was no life here. It was a world creating itself, caught in the caesura between the scraping away of the old order and the gestation of whatever altered form might follow.”
For most of this novel, I had it pegged in my mind as a 4 because when I commit to a Southern Gothic novel, I prepare myself for a lot of grit. The first three quarters of this were a bit tame by genre standards, but immensely readable with beautiful prose. Then I hit “Book Four” where Gay forces every single character in this novel to make hard and gut wrenching decisions, life changing decisions. And the way Gay handled this section is nothing short of genius. This is a tour de force.
Wow.
This is my first novel by William Gay, and the man was a maestro at creating believable backwoods Southern characters and realistic dialogue. I could picture these people - their dusty clothes, their weathered skin, their beat-up cars. I could hear their voices - “ort” for ought; “kindly” for kind of; “ever” for every. Set in the 1950’s in a corner of Tennessee, “70 miles back from Nashville,” this story leads us down the twisted path of the Bloodworth family where we meet patriarch E.F. Bloodworth; his sons Brady, Boyd and Warren; and his grandsons Fleming and Neal. Gay throws a stellar side character into this mix - the always fumbling but hilarious Junior Albright. Women are scattered throughout the story, but they are not the focus - they lie shimmering in the background trying to survive these men the best they can. Because these are men who follow their own path - for good or ill.
One last requirement for a genuine Southern Gothic novel . . . the apocalyptic ending. And even in this, Gay writes pure poetry: “There was no life here. It was a world creating itself, caught in the caesura between the scraping away of the old order and the gestation of whatever altered form might follow.”
For most of this novel, I had it pegged in my mind as a 4 because when I commit to a Southern Gothic novel, I prepare myself for a lot of grit. The first three quarters of this were a bit tame by genre standards, but immensely readable with beautiful prose. Then I hit “Book Four” where Gay forces every single character in this novel to make hard and gut wrenching decisions, life changing decisions. And the way Gay handled this section is nothing short of genius. This is a tour de force.
February 11, 2014
First William Gay novel I’ve read and it’s left me awestruck.
Beautiful and brilliant.
Hilarious yet inevitably tragic.
These past few years I’ve read some excellent Southern Gothic/Redneck Noir/Grit Lit novels but this one left me feeling like I’d wandered drunk through a lost and forgotten family graveyard in the deep South somewhere only to stumble winding up impaled on a tombstone.
Beautiful and brilliant.
Hilarious yet inevitably tragic.
These past few years I’ve read some excellent Southern Gothic/Redneck Noir/Grit Lit novels but this one left me feeling like I’d wandered drunk through a lost and forgotten family graveyard in the deep South somewhere only to stumble winding up impaled on a tombstone.
October 1, 2018
A lyrical and haunting tale about the Bloodworth family in early 1950's Tennessee.When the family patriarch EF wanders home after a twenty year absence, his 3 grown sons and his wife who has grown old and " feeble minded" are none to happy to see him. In fact only his grandson 17 year old Fleming seems to welcome him home and so takes on the lions share of the family's burdened past.
Gay's writing has been likened to many Southern greats like Faulkner and McCarthy, and there are many great thoughts here. If you're a wordsmith or someone who marks or memorizes great passages, this one's for you.
Read for On The Southern Literary Trail 9/18 4 stars
Gay's writing has been likened to many Southern greats like Faulkner and McCarthy, and there are many great thoughts here. If you're a wordsmith or someone who marks or memorizes great passages, this one's for you.
Read for On The Southern Literary Trail 9/18 4 stars
July 2, 2013
Some link Gay to Cormac as the younger brother who can’t get out of the firstborn’s shadow. I am writing this review in part to debunk that concept; forgive me there will be a soapbox section at the tail-end. Before I get wound up though, the take away here is that this book touches all the bases to be great. It does more than touch each base; it slides hard into all of them....first and home included. It's a great character story. Fleming is pure hero. He's a high school dropout who is an academic by his own inert nature yet he hangs with and loves those who despise the finer points of living. EF is the deadbeat everyone loves, respects, and admires. Able to charm the uncharmable. A fighter, a lover, a magical being that tips his hat, tips his waitresses, and tips the scales in his own favor more often than not. Despite all these magnetisms, he’s the character you might call a "loser" if your real life ever crossed his path. I hate that admission because in my view this character may actually be autobiographic for Mr. Gay who I hate I'll now never have to opportunity to meet in real life. The book ends in a place that will leave the characters parked in your mind for a long time to come......wondering, hoping, believing (in that order).
There are two opposite love stories each with their own twists, caveats, and conclusions. There are small side scenes that develop plot, setting, and character all at the same time. The snake in the path of cedars might be my favorite scene of all time. There was the perfect amount of musical and literary reference to other work that created intrigue but was not overdone to the point of making it seem forced. Unlike some books I esteem, there are tinges of victory over despair; fear not, desperation and ill-fated circumstance still abound. The rare and selfish feeling of not wanting to loan this text out after finishing despite my desire that others experience it triggers my wee small voice of guilt; give me a few weeks and I might let you read my copy.
Now, for those trumpeting Gay only as a McCarthy mimicker....I would disagree. Certainly, he likely is an enthusiast like the rest of us (Heaven forbid one author be a "fanboy" of another). I can obviously see the links. The similarities between Bellwether (as just one example) and some of McCarthy's characters come to mind. I think he uses hawks caught in thermals very similarly. At times, I felt influences and overtones from The Orchard Keeper, Suttree, heck even Child of God was in there in places. Most of us who dwell around in this genre might take the same kinds of steps (not mistakes) if we set out to write our own tales. Gay's dive into these parallels was clearly conscious. Had he not "wanted" to draw those comparisons he was clearly gifted enough to avoid creating this discussion. Our life's flavor is seasoned with those we respect the most. For that matter, McCarthy (whom I love) took pieces of Faulkner and O'Conner and then developed his own unique voice. Gay represents his own voice in that same manner. He has an ability to say things that are profound and deep very simplistically. While he doesn’t require the same bedside dictionary as McCarthy, he writes with such master that almost no one could do something so elaborate but plain at the same time. It is akin to McCarthy without the distraction. Sometimes the distraction of McCarthy makes it hard to hear the alarm bells that need to be going off. McCarthy is better on second read than first. Most who would try to make McCarthyisms more digestible would not be able to evoke the same HUGE trains of thought. Gay accomplishes that in ways that we all SHOULD be able to do but can't. I love them both; two castoffs not looking for rescue on different islands (or better yet desolate, God forsaken stands of scrub pine) than point toward the same moon at the same dusky hour.
There are two opposite love stories each with their own twists, caveats, and conclusions. There are small side scenes that develop plot, setting, and character all at the same time. The snake in the path of cedars might be my favorite scene of all time. There was the perfect amount of musical and literary reference to other work that created intrigue but was not overdone to the point of making it seem forced. Unlike some books I esteem, there are tinges of victory over despair; fear not, desperation and ill-fated circumstance still abound. The rare and selfish feeling of not wanting to loan this text out after finishing despite my desire that others experience it triggers my wee small voice of guilt; give me a few weeks and I might let you read my copy.
Now, for those trumpeting Gay only as a McCarthy mimicker....I would disagree. Certainly, he likely is an enthusiast like the rest of us (Heaven forbid one author be a "fanboy" of another). I can obviously see the links. The similarities between Bellwether (as just one example) and some of McCarthy's characters come to mind. I think he uses hawks caught in thermals very similarly. At times, I felt influences and overtones from The Orchard Keeper, Suttree, heck even Child of God was in there in places. Most of us who dwell around in this genre might take the same kinds of steps (not mistakes) if we set out to write our own tales. Gay's dive into these parallels was clearly conscious. Had he not "wanted" to draw those comparisons he was clearly gifted enough to avoid creating this discussion. Our life's flavor is seasoned with those we respect the most. For that matter, McCarthy (whom I love) took pieces of Faulkner and O'Conner and then developed his own unique voice. Gay represents his own voice in that same manner. He has an ability to say things that are profound and deep very simplistically. While he doesn’t require the same bedside dictionary as McCarthy, he writes with such master that almost no one could do something so elaborate but plain at the same time. It is akin to McCarthy without the distraction. Sometimes the distraction of McCarthy makes it hard to hear the alarm bells that need to be going off. McCarthy is better on second read than first. Most who would try to make McCarthyisms more digestible would not be able to evoke the same HUGE trains of thought. Gay accomplishes that in ways that we all SHOULD be able to do but can't. I love them both; two castoffs not looking for rescue on different islands (or better yet desolate, God forsaken stands of scrub pine) than point toward the same moon at the same dusky hour.
December 19, 2021
Second time reading this novel. I first read it seven years ago.
He had begun to fear for his sanity, felt that madness tracked him like a homeless dog, needed only a kind word or gesture to throw its lot with him forever
He had begun to fear for his sanity, felt that madness tracked him like a homeless dog, needed only a kind word or gesture to throw its lot with him forever
Pity poor Fleming Bloodworth, half an orphan what with his mother abandoning him after taking up with a peddler and leaving Fleming and his father Boyd alone in what is basically an empty house. Shortly into the novel, Boyd himself takes off up north after her, haunting one brightly lit roadhouse after another.
Pity too old E. F. Bloodworth -a Lamar Bascomb type banjo picker and singer of songs older than the old dark, lost America. Gone for over twenty years, traveling to wherever his Hillbilly heart and happenstance took him, he now wishes to return to his hometown of Ackerman's Field. Return to his beloved wife Julia and his three now grown sons -one of whom hates him and resents his desire to come home.
He looked back at the road, glanced at Coble beside him. He was sorry he had not simply ridden the bus. For hundreds of miles he had listened to Coble's autobiography until he knew Coble and his genealogy better than Coble did himself. Coble loved to talk and no subject suited him better than Coble. He had come up from nothing and made a small fortune by using his head and keeping his eye on the ball. Nobody ever got up early enough in the morning to put one over on him. He was well thought of in his hometown. Without actually saying so he left the impression that everywhere he went in town he was carried on the shoulders of cheering compatriots. That when he left town things shut down and stores did not even bother to open until his return. Women found him wellnigh irresistible . Women began flinging off their clothing at the faintest rumor that he was even within screwing distance, and would not settle for second best. Had the old man possessed so much as a jackhandle he would have lept upon Coble sometime during the night and beaten him into unconsciousness, let the truck go where it might.
It's author William Gay's warped sense of humor, pathos, and compassion for the characters he's created that make the words of this novel (said to be partly autobiographical ...certainly in the creation of the character of young Fleming, an innocent enamored of books and incompetent with women) dance so lightly upon the page.
The novel follows Fleming's misadventures and exchanges with the many other characters he encounters on the way to becoming a man and wanting something more than life on the outskirts of a small town, sharecropping and raising a family he can barely afford to feed.
Recommended reading… Noir fans; Grit Noir fans; Southern Lit fans: you can’t live another day without dreamless nights if you don’t read this.
April 27, 2012
Reading about a character who is as beguiled by books as you are in that moment, it's like a secret shared across time. Fleming Bloodworth, I want to be in your gang.
Add everything said well, seductively, throw in voodoo, vengeance, well drawn characters, a gothic backdrop and you have Provinces of Night. I kind of overdosed on the first 20 pages and had to give it a rest. Gorgeous stuff.
You also need time with it when the story rambles, as the characters become drowsy - you need to settle into it, but it's still magic.
I disagree that this is a Cormac McCarthy rip off, William Gay tells his story using different tools, no better or worse but they both share the excellent skill of rendering the dark beautiful.
Add everything said well, seductively, throw in voodoo, vengeance, well drawn characters, a gothic backdrop and you have Provinces of Night. I kind of overdosed on the first 20 pages and had to give it a rest. Gorgeous stuff.
You also need time with it when the story rambles, as the characters become drowsy - you need to settle into it, but it's still magic.
I disagree that this is a Cormac McCarthy rip off, William Gay tells his story using different tools, no better or worse but they both share the excellent skill of rendering the dark beautiful.
December 9, 2018
This was my first experience reading of any of William Gay’s work and it did not disappoint.
Rather than following a traditional plot, Provinces of Night works as more of a series of episodes and scenes that all blend together to create the narrative. The novel centers in on the Bloodworth family in 1950s Tennessee. E.F. Bloodworth, the patriarch, has returned home after walking out on his wife and family twenty years prior. Much of the plot is devoted to focus on Bloodworth, his sons (Warren, Boyd, Brady) and his grandson (Fleming).
I thought the characters were very well drawn. Many were very realistically portrayed, with a certain rawness, and unfiltered and gritty. I really felt invested and interested in the outcome of Fleming and enjoyed many of the scenes with him. The way that Fleming was developed definitely reminded me of a coming of age or bildungsroman in that there is a definite build up and progression of character from point A to point B as he learns about growing up.
There are some influences from both William Falkner and Cormac McCarthy within Gay’s Provinces of Night. The book has a definite literary quality to it, not only in its depth and structure, but within its prose, with some beautifully constructed passages. Within the scope of the novel, there is much examination of the human condition and familial conflicts and bonds.
Rather than following a traditional plot, Provinces of Night works as more of a series of episodes and scenes that all blend together to create the narrative. The novel centers in on the Bloodworth family in 1950s Tennessee. E.F. Bloodworth, the patriarch, has returned home after walking out on his wife and family twenty years prior. Much of the plot is devoted to focus on Bloodworth, his sons (Warren, Boyd, Brady) and his grandson (Fleming).
I thought the characters were very well drawn. Many were very realistically portrayed, with a certain rawness, and unfiltered and gritty. I really felt invested and interested in the outcome of Fleming and enjoyed many of the scenes with him. The way that Fleming was developed definitely reminded me of a coming of age or bildungsroman in that there is a definite build up and progression of character from point A to point B as he learns about growing up.
There are some influences from both William Falkner and Cormac McCarthy within Gay’s Provinces of Night. The book has a definite literary quality to it, not only in its depth and structure, but within its prose, with some beautifully constructed passages. Within the scope of the novel, there is much examination of the human condition and familial conflicts and bonds.
February 9, 2017
I'm sorry, no plot summary in this review. You can read one of the other reviews or the book jacket. But I will tell you why you should read it. There is an aching poetic beauty, that never runs away with it self and becomes pretense. There is also straightforward simplicity that is never banal or ordinary. The characters with their burdens and hopes are vivid enough that you can smell them. The ending works, but you still walk away with things to chew on, you wonder about the characters once you close the book. This book is gorgeous.
I was sorry when it ended. Then sad again the next day when I remembered I'd finished it. It left me lonely for more.
I was sorry when it ended. Then sad again the next day when I remembered I'd finished it. It left me lonely for more.
April 15, 2021
Another outstanding novel by William Gay -- I think I liked his Twilight just a wee bit more but jeez louise. This was truly something.
more to come
reading his The Long Home shortly.
more to come
reading his The Long Home shortly.
December 31, 2023
This is one of a literal handful remaining on my “great books I’m saving for later” shelf. It will be forever remembered as the novel I was reading when I retired after 35 years in scientific research in the pharmaceutical industry. It is likely my last book of the year and I missed my 31-book goal by the largest margin ever for the first time. My excuse for this is I took up painting and used up a substantial amount of my limited free time producing some creations that I gifted over Christmas. Honestly, I wasted too much time watching baseball too, where my Saint Louis Cardinals endured one of the most disappointing seasons in memory. Today (12/31/23 or 123123) is the last day of the year and I did some early morning noodling to learn that Gay was also a painter, not only of houses and walls, but of pictures. We obviously shared some sensibilities, by missed each other in actual years (he died in 2012) – like Raymond Carver who I discovered about that time of his death. Gay was a late bloomer, taking it all in and eventually producing his timeless and invaluable art in literature. Clearly, he is the protagonist in this novel, in the 17-year-old Fleming Bloodworth – I believe this is how he wants us to see and understand him. Like Cormac McCarthy, when his people speak there is no need for quotation marks – I can agree they are superfluous in his writing style, the voices are so very distinct and easy to identify. This book reminded me of McCarthy’s Suttree in some ways, especially the ne’er do well friend, Allbright, who provides no shortage of comic relief through his many escapades. I am a bit saddened that this is the last of his novels published while alive and there will be no more for me to look forward to.
This is the story of reconciliation of fathers and grandfathers to their family in the hills and hollows of Tennessee – based on the location relative to Memphis and other points. I’ve read all but one produced by this late-blooming, enigmatic author, apparently a workman who mostly wrote on the side and late in life. The locale of this novel is essentially the same area where Gay lived (Hohenwald, TN), between Memphis and Nashville just north of Alabama. I was blown away by his book Twilight where he refers to a “no man’s land” called the Harrikin, an undeveloped area of TN so remote and impossible to navigate that is considered a completely new, mysterious and wild world. He created the fictional town of Ackerman’s Field, and the details of the land and the people are so exquisitely captured, this is a world that he clearly has a lived experience. I see there is a video or two of him, that I’ll inevitably watch, but for now I prefer to enjoy his art for its own sake, the way he and his publisher wanted me to see it (before the internet intervened).
The main character is the young Fleming, abandoned long ago by his mother who left when he was born, and more lately by his father who has headed to Detroit to track her down. His father and his uncles are unreliable, as was their father (the legendary E.F. Bloodworth) who also left the mountains of Tennessee to pursue his dream of musicianship (Gary shows his prowess in understanding original Appalachian music through this character). So our story becomes a bildungsroman (that’s my first use of that word!) of an introspective boy who lives alone and has nearly abandoned hope of getting his stories published (they are required to be typewritten in 1952, and he has not means to use or acquire such technology. Mostly it is a colorful pastiche of the escapades of his uncles, his friends, and his amorous excursions. Gay writes not only with remarkable authenticity (or so it seems, he was born and died in the little hamlet of Hohenwald after some brief stints in NYC and Chi town) but with a particular ear for unique turns of phrase. This story makes you feel as if you are in Appalachia in the 1950s, in an area just before it as dammed and flooded to become an enormous lake for recreation (by the Tennessee Valley Authority). The TVA activities, starting in the 1930s, is essentially the story of modernities’ devastation of original landscapes and old growth timber, and can be viewed today from boats and jet skis. Before all that, it was a remote place where moonshining during prohibition created a culture for which it is still known today.
This book was a comfort to me – its authenticity avoids the crass caricatures so common by others who write about Appalachia but haven’t actually spent very much time there. I can appreciate that Gay has left us this legacy, something real for history – often fiction succeeds where endless facts and nonfiction fail.
It is actually 123123 (31 December 2023), and I must eat and carry on with my day here, a cold and overcast outdoors held at bay by a cozy home alongside my dearest. Certainly, this will be my last book of the year, I look forward to new freedoms in 2024 and the mystery that will, hopefully, unfold.
This is the story of reconciliation of fathers and grandfathers to their family in the hills and hollows of Tennessee – based on the location relative to Memphis and other points. I’ve read all but one produced by this late-blooming, enigmatic author, apparently a workman who mostly wrote on the side and late in life. The locale of this novel is essentially the same area where Gay lived (Hohenwald, TN), between Memphis and Nashville just north of Alabama. I was blown away by his book Twilight where he refers to a “no man’s land” called the Harrikin, an undeveloped area of TN so remote and impossible to navigate that is considered a completely new, mysterious and wild world. He created the fictional town of Ackerman’s Field, and the details of the land and the people are so exquisitely captured, this is a world that he clearly has a lived experience. I see there is a video or two of him, that I’ll inevitably watch, but for now I prefer to enjoy his art for its own sake, the way he and his publisher wanted me to see it (before the internet intervened).
The main character is the young Fleming, abandoned long ago by his mother who left when he was born, and more lately by his father who has headed to Detroit to track her down. His father and his uncles are unreliable, as was their father (the legendary E.F. Bloodworth) who also left the mountains of Tennessee to pursue his dream of musicianship (Gary shows his prowess in understanding original Appalachian music through this character). So our story becomes a bildungsroman (that’s my first use of that word!) of an introspective boy who lives alone and has nearly abandoned hope of getting his stories published (they are required to be typewritten in 1952, and he has not means to use or acquire such technology. Mostly it is a colorful pastiche of the escapades of his uncles, his friends, and his amorous excursions. Gay writes not only with remarkable authenticity (or so it seems, he was born and died in the little hamlet of Hohenwald after some brief stints in NYC and Chi town) but with a particular ear for unique turns of phrase. This story makes you feel as if you are in Appalachia in the 1950s, in an area just before it as dammed and flooded to become an enormous lake for recreation (by the Tennessee Valley Authority). The TVA activities, starting in the 1930s, is essentially the story of modernities’ devastation of original landscapes and old growth timber, and can be viewed today from boats and jet skis. Before all that, it was a remote place where moonshining during prohibition created a culture for which it is still known today.
This book was a comfort to me – its authenticity avoids the crass caricatures so common by others who write about Appalachia but haven’t actually spent very much time there. I can appreciate that Gay has left us this legacy, something real for history – often fiction succeeds where endless facts and nonfiction fail.
It is actually 123123 (31 December 2023), and I must eat and carry on with my day here, a cold and overcast outdoors held at bay by a cozy home alongside my dearest. Certainly, this will be my last book of the year, I look forward to new freedoms in 2024 and the mystery that will, hopefully, unfold.
December 30, 2021
William Gay's Provinces of Night is one of those books where you say to yourself "This writer is pretty good", and then later "No, he's really good", and later "No, he's amazing." The title is a phrase taken from the writing of Cormac McCarthy. I see a similarity in Gay and McCarthy's evocative writing - I think it mostly appears when characters' mental states take on flavors of their physical world. Gay uses the area's ever-changing weather as a metaphor for evil or sinister threats, perhaps from God himself. Heat lightning is often seen ominously flashing on the horizon. The town is alternately roasted with burning sun, deluged with torrential rains and frozen solid with ice storms.
Fleming Bloodworth is the central character in a three-generation story that takes place in rural northwestern Tennessee in 1952. Fleming is 17. His grandfather E. F. Bloodworth is a blues musician who left town long ago and has not been heard from since. Fleming hears stories about his temper and violent actions. Bloodworth had three sons. Fleming's dad Boyd has also left town in pursuit of his wife and the man who stole her away to Detroit. Warren is the least dysfunctional son, but hardly lives a conventional life. Brady is alternately considered crazy or dangerous - he puts hexes on enemies that many people fear are very real and effective.
While Fleming, whose thoughts and actions carry the story forward, appears to be a normal kid, he is looked upon with suspicion and even derision because he likes books and is writing one. Fleming meets the beautiful 16 year-old girl Raven Lee Halfacre and his world is turned upside down.
The overarching theme is the hopelessness and despair rampant in the community, " ... a common past of failure and loss ..." But the book is written with a perfect combination of sweet and bitter flavors. I believe it would make an excellent film, something of a blend of the aching melancholy of The Last Picture Show with the malevolence of No Country For Old Men. In Provinces of Night, many of the central characters spend a lot of time running from people they fear, so one can imagine (correctly) that the novel is largely populated with cheats, criminals and lowlifes.
Another thematic backdrop is the battle of the sexes, especially within families. Women never cease to be amazed and disgusted by men's inexplicable behavior. Gay wryly notes that what the women seen to be overlooking is that a large part of their mens' odd behaviors are directly a result of the women's previous reactions to other behaviors ! And finally, Gay makes note of the stubborn independence of poor southerners, in this story exemplified by those who could be rid of their troubles instantly if they moved away, but who stay rooted to the ground.
Fleming Bloodworth is the central character in a three-generation story that takes place in rural northwestern Tennessee in 1952. Fleming is 17. His grandfather E. F. Bloodworth is a blues musician who left town long ago and has not been heard from since. Fleming hears stories about his temper and violent actions. Bloodworth had three sons. Fleming's dad Boyd has also left town in pursuit of his wife and the man who stole her away to Detroit. Warren is the least dysfunctional son, but hardly lives a conventional life. Brady is alternately considered crazy or dangerous - he puts hexes on enemies that many people fear are very real and effective.
While Fleming, whose thoughts and actions carry the story forward, appears to be a normal kid, he is looked upon with suspicion and even derision because he likes books and is writing one. Fleming meets the beautiful 16 year-old girl Raven Lee Halfacre and his world is turned upside down.
The overarching theme is the hopelessness and despair rampant in the community, " ... a common past of failure and loss ..." But the book is written with a perfect combination of sweet and bitter flavors. I believe it would make an excellent film, something of a blend of the aching melancholy of The Last Picture Show with the malevolence of No Country For Old Men. In Provinces of Night, many of the central characters spend a lot of time running from people they fear, so one can imagine (correctly) that the novel is largely populated with cheats, criminals and lowlifes.
Another thematic backdrop is the battle of the sexes, especially within families. Women never cease to be amazed and disgusted by men's inexplicable behavior. Gay wryly notes that what the women seen to be overlooking is that a large part of their mens' odd behaviors are directly a result of the women's previous reactions to other behaviors ! And finally, Gay makes note of the stubborn independence of poor southerners, in this story exemplified by those who could be rid of their troubles instantly if they moved away, but who stay rooted to the ground.
July 7, 2016
William Gay was the son of a sharecropper from Tennessee with an ear for language and love of literature. A blue-collar worker with the soul of a poet, Gay read Thomas Wolfe, Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor when he wasn't painting houses or hanging drywall. Although he wrote for most of his life, his work was continually rejected by the literary scene. Finally, at 58 he published his first novel and the next year a bidding war ensued for Provinces of Night. He died at 70.
Provinces of Night is pure southern gothic, kindling with violence, beauty, and deep insight into the conflicting longings of human nature. It's about the ties of blood and their power to drown, the unforeseen karma of violence that flows far into the future, life (or death) affirming sex, and maybe, sometimes, love.
It's about the Bloodworth Family: the grand patriarch E.F., his sons Brady, Boyd and Warren; but it's mostly about 17-year-old Fleming, EF's grandson, abandoned by his parents to fend for himself with little more than a roof over his head and a wood burning stove. Fleming is on his own, but he has a toughness that only deep country can breed and a kindness the men of his family never had.
The tenaciously self-destructive men and hard rural culture of Provinces reminded me of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. Fleming embodies a beautifully male version of Dee Rolley with grit born from hardship and an inner moral compass many around him don't seem to have. Life is unforgiving and its lessons hard, but Fleming never utters a single word of self-pity. It doesn't cross his mind.
This is true literary fiction. It's not plot driven. It's about lives, souls, and what it means to be human. It's about how a young man with the odds stacked against him can possibly learn to survive the soul-shaking brutality and "appalling beauty of life."
William Gay knew a lot about life. While he was fixing houses and earning his daily bread, he was also watching, listening and taking everything in. I want to read everything he wrote, soak in his vision of the world, and hear its music.
These hours before first light were merciless. You could not go back to sleep and it was too early to get up and the things you had done or not done lay in your mind immovable as misshapen things you'd erected from stone. There was no give to these hours. They took no prisoners, made no compromises, and the things you had done could not be rationalized into anything save things you had done.
Provinces of Night is pure southern gothic, kindling with violence, beauty, and deep insight into the conflicting longings of human nature. It's about the ties of blood and their power to drown, the unforeseen karma of violence that flows far into the future, life (or death) affirming sex, and maybe, sometimes, love.
It's about the Bloodworth Family: the grand patriarch E.F., his sons Brady, Boyd and Warren; but it's mostly about 17-year-old Fleming, EF's grandson, abandoned by his parents to fend for himself with little more than a roof over his head and a wood burning stove. Fleming is on his own, but he has a toughness that only deep country can breed and a kindness the men of his family never had.
That's the craziest thing I ever heard in my life, his grandmother said. . . If sense was gunpowder, ever one of you men put together wouldn't have enough to load a round of birdshot.
The tenaciously self-destructive men and hard rural culture of Provinces reminded me of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. Fleming embodies a beautifully male version of Dee Rolley with grit born from hardship and an inner moral compass many around him don't seem to have. Life is unforgiving and its lessons hard, but Fleming never utters a single word of self-pity. It doesn't cross his mind.
Listen, he said vehemently. Somebody's going to have to say what they really mean and then do what they say they will. All this lying. All this bullshit and pretending. It's just wasting lives, wasting time, everything's just a waste.
She looked at him curiously. That's just the way people are. The way the world is. What are you trying to do, fix the world?
I don't want to fix the world. Fuck the world. Just the little part of it that I have to live on.
This is true literary fiction. It's not plot driven. It's about lives, souls, and what it means to be human. It's about how a young man with the odds stacked against him can possibly learn to survive the soul-shaking brutality and "appalling beauty of life."
He had no faith in the permanence of any of this. What he's seen of life had shown him that the world had little of comfort or assurance. He suspected that there were no givens, no map through the maze. Here in falling dark with the world rolling simultaneously toward him and away from him everything seemed no more than random. Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift of profound and appalling beauty.
William Gay knew a lot about life. While he was fixing houses and earning his daily bread, he was also watching, listening and taking everything in. I want to read everything he wrote, soak in his vision of the world, and hear its music.
July 25, 2022
List of things I don't know which influenced my relationship with this novel:
The way the South smells, tastes and sounds.
The way Southerners feel about their collective history.
The way Southerners understand "others" to feel about their collective history.
Whether or not most Southerners actually love the South.
List of my literary context for this novel:
Faulkner
Thomas Wolfe
Robert Penn Warren
Wendell Berry
So, I recognize much of the cadence. Feel the sweltering imprisonment of small town expectations and values. But I was also able to appreciate the moments of soaring literary transcendence: guiding the reader to feel the environment in a visceral and emotional way that was highly personal and specific to the setting. I felt these passages to be the author's love letter to a place he knows intimately.
These are characters, fully formed, and impervious to what the reader might judge or assume. Acknowledging my limited point of view, I must admit I could hardly imagine whether each was black or white and I could scarcely see how it mattered to the gritty trajectory of the plot: reap what you sow. Rage, boredom, loss, confusion, lust, love, loyalty: all played out in tragic and comic and predictable and unexpected tangents that were both delightful and sobering.
The way the South smells, tastes and sounds.
The way Southerners feel about their collective history.
The way Southerners understand "others" to feel about their collective history.
Whether or not most Southerners actually love the South.
List of my literary context for this novel:
Faulkner
Thomas Wolfe
Robert Penn Warren
Wendell Berry
So, I recognize much of the cadence. Feel the sweltering imprisonment of small town expectations and values. But I was also able to appreciate the moments of soaring literary transcendence: guiding the reader to feel the environment in a visceral and emotional way that was highly personal and specific to the setting. I felt these passages to be the author's love letter to a place he knows intimately.
These are characters, fully formed, and impervious to what the reader might judge or assume. Acknowledging my limited point of view, I must admit I could hardly imagine whether each was black or white and I could scarcely see how it mattered to the gritty trajectory of the plot: reap what you sow. Rage, boredom, loss, confusion, lust, love, loyalty: all played out in tragic and comic and predictable and unexpected tangents that were both delightful and sobering.
February 15, 2014
I just found this author, and I could not be more thrilled. It was an excellent book in the manner of Cormac McCarthy. I laughed a dozen times in this book, and I rarely find things this funny. Subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor, it really had me going. I attached a link to a review that will inspire you to read this wonderful book. See Justin Haynes review at---https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6...
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