Winter's Bone: Book and Movie

I reviewed Dan Woodrell's Winter's Bone in 2009. It was one of my reads of the year. At the time I wrote:

Winter’s Bone is a powerful tale, exquisitely told. Woodrell expertly immerses the reader in the rural, clannish society of the Ozarks, creating a multi-textured sense of place populated by authentic familial and social relations. And immersion is the right word; one doesn’t simply read a description of Ree’s world, one is plunged into it, living it with her, experiencing all her anxieties and frustrations. The characterization is excellent and Ree and her close and extended family are full, complex characters which radiate emotional depth and whose interactions and dialogue resonate true. Whilst the story is sombre and bleak, it also has hope, and it quickly hooks the reader in, with the narrative taut and tense, and the prose beautiful and lyrical. Indeed, one of the strengths of Woodrell’s writing is that it is so rich and yet so economical.

I quickly went off and purchased two more of Woodrell's books - The Ones You Do and Tomato Red.

At the weekend I rented Winter's Bone from the local DVD store. I'm a bit wary of watching film adaptations of books I've read because the movie invariably has a weaker narrative or the screenwriter/director has made a vague pastiche of the book changing the storyline in all kinds of ways (see my comparison of the book/movie The Ice Harvest). The film version of Winter's Bone is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. Even the style of storytelling seems to echo Woodrell's writing style. There was no attempt to jazz the film up with unnecessary violence or shoot-outs or over the top melodrama; this was crime drama with a small c, told in an under-stated, matter of fact way, concentrating on familial networks and social norms, and everyday rural life teetering on the edge. And it was compelling viewing, as the book was compelling reading. The movie has been shortlisted for four Oscars, including best film. Whether it'll manage to compete with the hype of the other contenders, I'm not sure, but I hope it's in the mix. The movie trailer can be watched here.

Review of Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (No Exit Press, 1998)

Sammy Barlach is a loser who's managed to get a job in the dog food factory in West Table, Missouri.  His first Friday payday he ends up in a trailer court getting drunk and high.  Soon its Sunday and trying to impress a girl he breaks into a deserted mansion.  When his companions skedaddle he tucks into a bottle of vodka and settles down for a quick nap in his new found luxury.  He’s woken by the diminutive Jamalee, with her tomato red hair, and beautiful Jason Merridew, a sister and brother dreaming of a better life and practising being rich.  When the police arrive, the three hot foot down to Venus Holler, a ramshackle collection of houses on the wrong side of the tracks.  Next to the place that Jamalee and Jason are housesitting lives their mother, Bev, whose approach to poverty is to turn tricks, look on the bright side of life, and party whenever the opportunity arises.  It’s not a life that Jamalee aspires to and Jason, with his model looks, is her ticket to the American dream.  Having lost his job, Sammy makes himself at home, pursuing the feisty Jamalee whilst taking to the bed of her mother.  When Jason turns up dead in suspicious circumstances, and the cops want to record it as an accident, the three slackers mobilise to seek justice.

Tomato Red reads a bit like a social realist play, with its gritty realism and harsh truths, and small cast of well drawn characters.  The dialogue and interactions between Sammy, Jamalee, Jason and Bev is pitch perfect, and Woodrell does an admirable job of immersing the reader in their world.  As ever, the prose is nicely crafted, and Woodrell has a deft hand for turning expressive phrasing and sharing interesting observations and insights into social relations.  Where the book falls a little short perhaps is with respect to plot, which is quite ponderous at times as if Woodrell is tentatively feeling his way, and the ending felt a little false and rushed.  I’ve become a huge fan of Woodrell’s country noir; Tomato Red didn’t quite match some of his other works, but its still a fine, entertaining read.

Review of The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell (No Exit Press, 1992)

Randi Tripp has run off to find fame as a singer with $47,000 that Lunch Pumphrey, the local jailbird and hitman, owes to the Tampa mafia. She’s left her elderly husband, John X. Shade to take the rap and to raise their young daughter, Etta. Aware that Lunch is a few morals short of those in the bible, Shade decides to make a run for it, heading to St Bruno, and back to the town he grew up in, and where his former wife and grown up children still live. Shade himself is no saint; an alcoholic, hustler, and womaniser now in his early sixties and becoming all too aware of his frailties, unable to hustle at the pool table due to failing eyesight and the shakes. Back in familiar territory, Shade tries to re-engage with his sons, and hustle by through the hosting of late night poker games with his old buddies, aware that Lunch Pumphrey will stop at nothing to get his money back.

Woodrell says that he writes ‘country noir’ and using the definition provided by Donna Moore over at Big Beats from Badsville, The Ones You Do is most definitely noir. The title refers to a line delivered by Lunch, who having slept with a husband’s wife tells him that one never regrets the ones you do, but the ones you don’t. It’s a moral line that John X. Shade has adhered to all his life, drifting from one man’s woman to another, using his natural charm to coax them into bed. The moral ambiguities of life is a theme that Woodrell examines with some skill, exploring their enactment and consequences, sometimes played out over many years. His prose is taut, economical and lyrical, and the plot and dialogue realistic, but what really sets Woodrell apart is his characterisation, which is superb. Indeed, what makes The Ones You Do work so well is that rather than tell the story from the perspective of one person, the story spends time with each character, their personality and history, and the complex relationships between them. As I noted on Saturday, reading Woodrell is like sucking down a cold beer on a humid, hot afternoon, and comes highly recommended. My review of Winter’s Bone here. I've two more Woodrell books on the TBR pile and they've been shuffled nearer to the top.

Sucking down a cold beer ...

Oh man, can Daniel Woodrell write. I'm halfway through The Ones You Do and it's like sucking down a cold beer on a humid, hot afternoon. It's not so much reading as immersion. It's a book full of great lines and neat, sharp character descriptions.

Here's Lunch Pumphery, a small, hard man who exerts power through violence and fear. 'Lunch looked like a self-portrait by a self-expressionist who'd been skipping his lithium.'

And here is John X. Shade's son - 'Tip Shade was a jumbo package of pock-faced bruiser, with long brown hair greased behind his ears, hanging to his shoulders. His eyes were of a common but unnamed brown hue. He tended to scowl by reflex and grunt in response. His neck was a holdover from some normal-necked person's nightmare, and when he crossed his arms it looked like two large snakes procreating a third.'

The Ones You Do is every bit as good as Winter's Bone - my review here.

Saturday Snippet: Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Winter’s Bone is a coming of age story concerning sixteen year old Ree’s attempt to track down her no-good father in order to save her family’s beat-up house from possession by a bail bond company (my review here). Beautifully told, Daniel Woodrell expertly captures the sense of place and clannish familial social relations of the rural Ozarks of Missouri. In the following passage, Ree turns to her jailbird uncle for help, only to be turned down – Woodrell capturing the casual violence and minor politics of family ties.

Teardrop raised his hand and drew it back to smack her and let fly but diverted the smacking hand inches from Ree’s face to the nut bowl. His fingers dove rattling into the nuts, beneath the silver pistol, and lifted it from the lazy Susan. He bounced the weapon on his flat palm as though judging the weight with his hand for a scale, sighed, then ran a finger gently along the barrel to brush away grains of salt.

“Don’t you, nor nobody else, neither, ever go down around Hawkfall askin’ them people shit about stuff they ain’t offerin’ to talk about. That’s a real good way to end up et by hogs, or wishin’ you was. You ain’t no silly-assed town girl. You know better’n that foolishness.’

‘But we’re all related, ain’t we?’

‘Our relations get watered kinda thin between this valley here and Hawkfall. It’s better’n bein’ a foreigner or town people, but it ain’t nowhere near the same as bein’ from Hawkfall.’

Victoria said, ‘You know all those people down there, Teardrop. You could ask.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I just mean, none of them’s goin’ to be in a great big hurry to tangle with you, neither. If Jessup’s over there, Ree needs to see him. Bad.’

‘I said shut up once already, with my mouth.’

Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. Therewould be no ready fix or answer or help. She felt like crying but wouldn’t. She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle. She would never cry where the tears might be seen and counted against her. ‘Jesus-fuckin’-Christ. Dad’s your only little brother!’

‘You think I forgot that?’ He grabbed the clip and slammed it into the pistol, then ejected it and tossed pistol and clip back into the nut bowl. He made a fist with his right hand and rubbed it with his left. ‘Jessup’n me run together for nigh on forty years – but I don’t know where he’s at, and I ain’t goin’ to go around askin’ after him, neither.’

Ree knew better than to say another word, but was going to anyhow, when Victoria grabbed her hand and held it, squeezed, then said, ‘Now, when is it you was tellin’ me you’ll be old enough to join the army?’

Definitely on my list of best reads for this year and an author whose back-catalogue I'm looking forward to catching up with.

Review of Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell (Sceptre, 2006)

Ree Dolly is sixteen and old beyond her years, living a hard life trying to make ends meet in a beat up house, deep in the rural Ozarks of Missouri, where every neighbour within thirty miles is also some kind of relative who live by their own code. Her father comes and goes, her mother has slipped into her own hazy world, and her two younger brothers aren’t yet old enough to look after themselves. Not long after her father wanders out to spend a few days doing who knows what, a local deputy comes to the house and tells her that if he doesn’t show up for a court date in a couple of days time the rest of the family will be turned out to fend for themselves and the property handed over to the bail bond company. Determined that his won’t happen she sets out to try and hunt him down, only her suspicious, clannish, extended family seem equally as determined to thwart her.

Winter’s Bone is a powerful tale, exquisitely told. Woodrell expertly immerses the reader in the rural, clannish society of the Ozarks, creating a multi-textured sense of place populated by authentic familial and social relations. And immersion is the right word; one doesn’t simply read a description of Ree’s world, one is plunged into it, living it with her, experiencing all her anxieties and frustrations. The characterization is excellent and Ree and her close and extended family are full, complex characters which radiate emotional depth and whose interactions and dialogue resonate true. Whilst the story is sombre and bleak, it also has hope, and it quickly hooks the reader in, with the narrative taut and tense, and the prose beautiful and lyrical. Indeed, one of the strengths of Woodrell’s writing is that it is so rich and yet so economical. I sense that Winter's Bone is a story that will stay with me for a long time and I very much look forward to reading more of Woodrell's work.