Tomato Red - Softcover

Woodrell, Daniel

3.79

3,378 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935415069 ISBN 13: 9781935415060

Publisher: Busted Flush Press, LLC, 2010

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By the author of Winter’s Bone, a 2011 Academy Award Best Picture Nominee. Winner of the PEN West Award for the Novel. A New York Times Notable Book.

"Reading Tomato Red—the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon—was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself—of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift."—Megan Abbott, award-winning author of Bury Me Deep

"Woodrell's storytelling is as melodic, jangly, and energetic as a good banjo riff. . . . If one is tempted to hear the echoes of William Faulkner, or Erskine Caldwell . . . no matter. Mr. Woodrell isn't imitating any of them. He's only drawing from the same well they did, but with a different take, a different voice, a sharper sense of irony."—The New York Times Book Review

A dark noir novel set in West Table, Missouri, featuring nineteen-year-old Jamalee, her gorgeous gay brother, Jason, and Sammy Barlach, the young man passing through West Table, who just may be their ticket out.

Daniel Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West Award for the Novel. His short story "Uncle" (in Busted Flush Press' A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir) was nominated for the Edgar Award.

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Review:

The hero of Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red is the most endearingly out-of-control loser you're likely to meet. Sammy Barlach looks like a person "who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect"; clerks follow him through the supermarket when he shops, and the police pull him over simply from habit. But in spite of his looks, Sammy only wants to be loved, even if it's just by "the bunch that would have me"--and in the hardscrabble world of West Table, Missouri, that's a bunch you wouldn't necessarily want to meet. The novel begins with a heady Methedrine rush, as Sammy celebrates payday by letting himself be talked into robbing a nearby mansion. Even when his newfound friends disappear as he's breaking in, he persists: "You might think I should've quit on the burglary right there, but I just love people, I guess, and didn't." The break-in leads Sammy into an unlikely alliance with the Merridew family: Jamalee and Jason and their mother Bev, a prostitute in the town's ironically named Venus Holler. Flame-haired Jamalee dreams constantly of a different kind of life, and she plans on using Jason's extraordinary beauty as her ticket out of West Table. Jason, however, seems to be shaping up as what Sammy calls "country queer"--which, as Sammy observes, "ain't the easiest walk to take amongst your throng of fellow humankind."

Unfortunately for Jamalee, Woodrell's Ozarks is a place that rewards ambition with disaster. Here as in his five previous "country noir" novels, Woodrell writes with a keen understanding of class and a barely contained sense of rage. The residents of West Table's trailer parks and shotgun shacks share Sammy's sense of limited possibilities. "I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain," Sammy thinks while wandering around the mansion, "and this place proves the point." Even when Jason sticks up for his own family, the way he does so is heartbreaking: "This expression of utter frankness takes over Jason's beautiful face, and he says, 'I don't think we're the lowest scum in town.' He didn't argue that we weren't scum, just disputed our position on the depth chart." With her mildewing etiquette guides and grandiose plans, Jamalee is the only character who doesn't share their sense of defeat, and she's the only one who, in the end, gets away--though she leaves behind her a trail of betrayal and heartache. By the time the novel's final tragedy rolls around, it seems both senseless and inevitable, as tragedies do in real life. Told in a voice that crackles with energy and wit, Tomato Red is sharp, funny, and more importantly, true. --Mary Park

About the Author:

Daniel Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas line. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and TOMATO RED won the PEN West Award for the Novel. Two novels have been adapted as major motion pictures: WOE TO LIVE ON(filmed in 1999 by Ang Lee as RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, starring Tobey Maguire & Skeet Ulrich) and WINTER'S BONE(2010; accepted to the U.S. Dramatic Competition category at Sundance). He is at work on his next novel, due from Little, Brown in 2011.

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