- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: No Exit Press; New edition edition (25 Oct 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1901982475
- ISBN-13: 978-1901982473
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 451,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Jacket
Set in the border states of Kansas and Missouri during the American Civil War, Daniel Woodrell's magnificent novel Woe To Live On, now filmed by Ang lee as Ride with the Devil, explores the nature of lawlessness and violence, friendship and loyalty, through the eyes and thoughts of Jake Roedel. During the winter of 1861 Roedel grows up fast, experiencing a brutal parody of war without standards or mercy.
Woe To Live On is a renegade western in the style of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man that celebrates the genre while at the same time bushwhacking some of its most celebrated traditions.
From the Back Cover
Set in the border states of Kansas and Missouri during the American Civil War Woe to Live On explores the nature of lawlessness and violence, friendship and loyalty, through the eyes and thoughts of Jake Roedel. During the winter of 1861 Roedel grows up fast, experiencing a brutal parody of war without standards or mercy.
Woodrell's colloquial dialogue seems to suggest a connection between the America of the 1860's and the present day. Woe to Live On is a renegade western in the style of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man that celebrates the genre while at the same time bushwacking some of its most celebrated traditions.
'Daniel Woodrell knows things, terrifically wonderful and funny and degenerate things that speak to the best of the human soul in the worst of circumstances.' Dee Brown
'Like William Kennedy's, Woodrell's prose has a lyrical quality that effectively evokes a sense of place.' San Francisco Examiner
'Woodrell's people live out there in that world of rare fiction that is realer than real.' Robert Campbell --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
WE RODE ACROSS THE HILLOCKS AND VALES OF MISsouri, hiding in uniforms of Yankee blue. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
WE RODE ACROSS THE HILLOCKS AND VALES OF MISsouri, hiding in uniforms of Yankee blue. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's hard to overstate just how impressive this book is. It's take on the American Civil War takes place far from the set piece battles of Gettysburgh and Antietam, in the farms and hamlets of Missouri and Kansas. There the war takes a very different shape; a low intensity, murderous cycle of ambush and reprisal carried out by neighbour against neighbour and family against family. A kind of 19th century Bosnia.
The protagonists of Woodrell's book are a group of confederate bushwhackers, barely out of their teens but hunted down by Union militias in a deadly guerilla war acted out among the the backwoods and ruined homesteads they once called home. While never shirking from the shocking violence and pillage wrecked by these youthful marauders, Woodrell still harbours a deep seated empathy for his young gunmen, whose patriotic notions of southern honour and gallantry are cruelly and rapidly disabused. Some lose themselves in homicidal hatred of the Yankees, others seek oblivion in rivers of rotgut whiskey, while the narrator Jake Roedell clings on for dear life to the loyalties of friendship in a world where all other certainty is ripped asunder.
Given the seriousness of the subject matter, you may be forgiven for thinking that this might be a depressing, if not downright harrowing read. However that would be to underestimate Woodrell's whiplash writing skills. Part dread morality tale, part breathless adventure, this book is stunningly well written. Not content with simply setting his book in the civil war era, it's distinctive first person narritive is also a stylistic homage to the writing of that period carrying all the energy, bravado and earthiness of the litreature that flowered in America at that time.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm not really into reading westerns and bought the book after having seen the film which I loved. The first page plunges the reader right into the midst of action and I found it hard to put the book down until I reached the end which was much too soon and leaves this reader dearly wanting to know what will become of the main characters. The language the novel is written in is refreshing and oh so suitable to the tale Wodrell has to tell. One can literally hear the characters speak and the expressions and grammar used, the dialogue being crisp and natural, make this book a true joy to read. This is one to take off the shelf again and again.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a landmark in literature. The writing is so concise yet conveys so much. Woodrell has to be one of the best novelists around. His command and use of the English language is both unique yet completely accessible. Despite writing on a subject which can often be difficult, as a reader, to plough through, Woodrell supplies a fantastic story which never falls short of the mark & I could barely put it down.
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