- Hardcover: 237 pages
- Publisher: No Exit Press (19 Dec 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1874061645
- ISBN-13: 978-1874061649
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 166,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
'Woodrell alternates between reaming the language with a dry corncob and practising a particularly skilful kind of literary cabinetwork. Tongue in cheek - and most other orifices - he celebrates blood, kin, home country and hot sex in this rich, funky, headshakingly original novel.' - E Annie Proulx
From the Back Cover
'I was on the drift from California to someplace that didn't have any bench warrants out on me ...'
Doyle Redmond is on the drift from a failed marriage and a floundering life, moving in an easterly direction in the Volvo he stole from his soon-to-be-ex-wife, heading for home: the red and rocky soil of the Ozarks where Redmonds have been farming and fighting since just after the Civil War.
'... a wild story of crime and passion.' Pinckney Benedict
'Woodrell alternates between reaming the language with a dry corncob and practising a particularly skilful kind of literary cabinetwork. Tongue in cheek (and in most other orifices) he celebrates blood kin, home country, and hot sex in this rich, funky, head-shakingly original novel. Woodrell is a ladystinger of a writer.' E.Annie Proulx
'One of the greatest and most original writers of recent years.' Select
'I loved it. Woodrell is a marvellous writer.' Roddy Doyle
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Daniel Woodrell has done it again - a gripping tale of small-time dope growers and good ol' boys in the Ozarks region of the US. The main character, a writer, goes back to where he feels most at ease - his hometown, where the women are horny and the living is easy, and everyone seems to have a not-so-legal sideline to make ends meet.
I honestly can't find a thing wrong with this novel - characters so well written you feel you know them, along with brilliant dialogue to match, and a perfect sense of place. Better than the over-rated Elmore Leonard, better than a Tarantino film. I can't give a higher recommendation than this - in a world of second-rate "crime thillers" that often don't thrill, this one stands out.
I honestly can't find a thing wrong with this novel - characters so well written you feel you know them, along with brilliant dialogue to match, and a perfect sense of place. Better than the over-rated Elmore Leonard, better than a Tarantino film. I can't give a higher recommendation than this - in a world of second-rate "crime thillers" that often don't thrill, this one stands out.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have to up the star rating average of this magnificent novel and counteract the downgrading it has received from Mr Fraser in his review. At present Daniel Woodrell is one the great unsung voices in American literature. Perhaps the film adaptation of his best novel Winter's Bone will change this? But Woodrell has been here before with Ride With the Devil, Ang Lee's wonderful but invisible adaptation of Woe to Live On. Give Us a Kiss is not the absolute best of Woodrell but it is my personal favourite. It's a tale of an errant writer drawn back to his outlaw family in the Ozark Mountains. The hero is Doyle Redmond (a sort of hillbilly forerunner of Calinfornication's Hank Moody). Doyle finds a stoner Eden of sorts with his brother, his brother's partner and her daughter. He helps them prepare a dope crop, pursues the daughter, messes around in mountain lakes and graveyards and ruminates on the nature of family ties, blood feuds, and great writing born of experience. Most of the novel comes off as a sort of witty, bawdy, middle aged hedonist's spring break. But it is a deceptively rambling narrative. The baggy nature of the story telling is deliberate, reflecting the hero's misplaced sense of his own security in his new found Eden. In reality he has walked in on the latest chapter in a long and vicious generational blood feud. As the story progresses hostile forces that have hung literally and figuratively around the periphery of his Ozark refuge begin to show their heads. By the time the novel finishes Doyle is neck deep in blood and darkness.
Woodrell easily fulfils the basic criterion of any great crime writer. His Dialogue is crisp. His characters are colourful and believable. His sense of place is vivid. He takes a part of America often degraded by Hollywood and gives it back its humanity. In Woodrell's novels the Ozarks is still a scary place. It is an un-navigable landscape to aliens and strangers and sometimes a barely survivable one for natives. But it is a world expertly drawn with love, comedy, desperation, history and violence. Give Us A Kiss is a great starting point for exploring the universe Woodrell knows, loves, fears and respects. And unlike many crime writers each trip with Woodrell into the Ozarks is completely different. The flip tone of Give Us Kiss might not prepare you for the almost Aeschylien austerity of Winters Bone, the 19th Century argot and unsettling historical objectivity of Woe to Live On, or the heartbreaking tragedy of Shug in The Death of Sweet Mister.
Woodrell easily fulfils the basic criterion of any great crime writer. His Dialogue is crisp. His characters are colourful and believable. His sense of place is vivid. He takes a part of America often degraded by Hollywood and gives it back its humanity. In Woodrell's novels the Ozarks is still a scary place. It is an un-navigable landscape to aliens and strangers and sometimes a barely survivable one for natives. But it is a world expertly drawn with love, comedy, desperation, history and violence. Give Us A Kiss is a great starting point for exploring the universe Woodrell knows, loves, fears and respects. And unlike many crime writers each trip with Woodrell into the Ozarks is completely different. The flip tone of Give Us Kiss might not prepare you for the almost Aeschylien austerity of Winters Bone, the 19th Century argot and unsettling historical objectivity of Woe to Live On, or the heartbreaking tragedy of Shug in The Death of Sweet Mister.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have read the Bayou Trilogy, three novels set in Louisiana, and this and two others set in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, which is where Woodrell comes from, and about which territory he mostly now writes. This is the first of the Ozark books, and it combines the gritty country style of the later books with the good humour of the earlier Bayou novels. Later his writing seems to get bleaker, although also kind of wilder. Any which way they're all good, though if I'm honest I prefer the folky good humour like you get in this crazy story of family honour.
I've read a number of American thriller writers including Ellroy, Burke, Chandler, but along with Walter Mosley this guy is my favourite.
I've read a number of American thriller writers including Ellroy, Burke, Chandler, but along with Walter Mosley this guy is my favourite.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir
Daniel Woodrell is among the very best writers I have read in my long career as a devourer of books of all genres, by authors fair and foul. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Jelena
OVERRATED GUFF
I've got to disagree with James Ellroy's "Stone Brilliant" review of this book -
My own thoughts tend toward "Stone Age" or "Neanderthal" - one of the few books I have... Read more
My own thoughts tend toward "Stone Age" or "Neanderthal" - one of the few books I have... Read more
Published 21 months ago by P. Fraser
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