Bøger af Donald Ray Pollock

Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, trawl America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. The spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick are running from the law.

Blunt, brutal, but infused with a deep sympathy, Knockemstiff is a pitch-dark and hilarious collection of stories set in a tiny town in Southern Ohio. The youth of Knockemstiff grow up in the malignant shadow of their parents;

Cane, Cob and Chimney Jewett are young Georgia sharecroppers held under the thumb of their domineering, God-struck father Pearl. When he dies unexpectedly, they set out on horseback to rob and loot their way to wealth and infamy, inspired by a lurid dime novel that only one of them can read.

From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiffcalled ';powerful, remarkable, exceptional' by the Los Angeles Timescomes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic overtones of Flannery O'Connor at her most haunting. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There's Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can't save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his ';prayer log.' There's Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There's the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte's orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

I udkanten af landsbyen Knockemstiff i den fjerneste afkrog af Ohio i USA’s bibelbælte bor Willard Russell med sin kone Charlotte og sønnen Arvin – og Charlotte er ved at dø af kræft, uanset hvor meget Willard beder og hvor mange dyr han ofrer ved sin bedestamme ude i skoven.Efter Charlottes død ønsker Willard ikke at leve videre, så Arvin efterlades til en opvækst hos sine bedsteforældre. Herefter bliver Arvins liv på skæbnesvanger vis sammenvævet med et galleri af lurvede mennesker: et afstumpet kærestepar, som er turnerende seriemordere, en prædikant , der overhælder sig med giftige edderkopper, og en korrupt sherif. Alle disse ingredienser blandes på medrivende vis sammen til en rå skildring af en ung mands opvækst på vrangsiden af det amerikanske samfund, indimellem opblødt af en barsk humor og den menneskelighed, som Arvin og hans bedsteforældre repræsenterer.”Pollocks sprog er lige så smukt, som det er hårdkogt. Han ved, hvordan han lokker læserne ind i en scene, og hvornår han skal trække dem gispende ud igen.” New York Times Book Review