Now a Netflix film starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson
A dark and riveting vision of 1960s 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 over tones 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 sacrifi cial blood he pours on his "prayer log." There's Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill ers, 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.
Now a Netflix film starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson
A dark and riveting vision of 1960s 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 over tones 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 sacrifi cial blood he pours on his "prayer log." There's Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill ers, 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.
DONALD RAY POLLOCK is the author of the novel The Devil All the Time and the story collection Knockemstiff, recipient of the 2009 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973 to 2005. He holds an MFA from Ohio State University.
"Brutally creative. . . . Pollock knows how to dunk readers into a
scene and when to pull them out gasping."--The New York Times Book
Review
“Fulfills the promise in [Knockemstiff]. . . . Invites comparisons
to Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver.” –USA Today
"Finely woven. . . . [A] throat-stomping Appalachian crime story."
–GQ
“For fans of No Country for Old Men . . . sure to give you goose
bumps.” —Details
"Should cement Pollock's reputation as a significant voice in
American fiction." —Los Angeles Times
"Will have you on the edge of your seat." —Christian Science
Monitor
“A systematic cataloguing of the horror and hypocrisy that festers
in the dark shadow of the American dream.” —The Portland
Mercury
“You may be repelled, you may be shocked, you will almost certainly
be horrified, but you will read every last word.” —The Washington
Post
“Disarmingly smooth prose startled by knife-twists of black humor.
. . . Expertly employs the conventions of Southern Gothic horror.”—
The Wall Street Journal
"Reads as if the love child of O'Connor and Faulkner was captured
by Cormac McCarthy, kept in a cage out back and forced to consume
nothing but onion rings, Oxycontin and Terrence Malick's
Badlands."--The Oregonian
"[Pollock] doesn't get a word wrong in this super-edgy American
Gothic stunner."--Elle
"Features a bleak and often nightmarish vision of the decades
following World War II, a world where redemption, on the rare
occasions when it does come to town, rides shotgun with
soul-scarring consequences."--The Onion, A.V. Club
"Mr. Pollock's new novel is, if anything, even darker than the
Knockemstiff, and its violence and religious preoccupations venture
into Flannery O'Connor territory."--The New York Times
“Donald Ray Pollock’s engaging and proudly violent first
novel…suggests a new category of fiction—grindhouse literary.
Subtle characterization: check. Well-crafted sentences: check.
Enthusiastic amounts of murder and mayhem: check, check.”—The Daily
Beast
"Beneath the gothic horror is an Old Testament sense of a moral
order in the universe, even if the restoration of that order itself
requires violence."--The Columbus Dispatch
"A smorgasbord of grotesque characters trapped in a pressure-cooker
plot. . . . Brutal fun."--Esquire
"For a first novel so soaked in stale sweat and bright fresh blood,
Pollock's sweat is well-earned, and his blood is
wise."--Philadelphia Citypaper
"A gallery of reprobates and religious fanatics... are
multidimensional, flawed human beings."--Dayton Daily News
"[The Devil All the Time is] a world unto its own, a world vividly
and powerfully brought to life by a literary stylist who packs a
punch as deadly as pulp-fiction master Jim Thompson and as
evocative and morally rigorous as Russell Banks."—Philadelphia
Inquirer
“Stunning . . . . One wild story . . . gives us sex, murder, mayhem
and some of the most bizarre characters in fiction today.”—Richmond
Times-Dispatch
"Brutally creative. . . . Pollock knows how to dunk readers into a
scene and when to pull them out gasping."--The New York Times
Book Review
"Fulfills the promise in [Knockemstiff]. . . . Invites
comparisons to Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver." -USA
Today
"Finely woven. . . . [A] throat-stomping Appalachian crime
story." -GQ
"For fans of No Country for Old Men . . . sure to give you goose
bumps." -Details
"Should cement Pollock's reputation as a significant voice in
American fiction." -Los Angeles Times
"Will have you on the edge of your seat." -Christian
Science Monitor
"A systematic cataloguing of the horror and hypocrisy that festers
in the dark shadow of the American dream." -The Portland
Mercury
"You may be repelled, you may be shocked, you will almost
certainly be horrified, but you will read every last word." -The
Washington Post
"Disarmingly smooth prose startled by knife-twists of black humor.
. . . Expertly employs the conventions of Southern Gothic horror."-
The Wall Street Journal
"Reads as if the love child of O'Connor and Faulkner was captured
by Cormac McCarthy, kept in a cage out back and forced to consume
nothing but onion rings, Oxycontin and Terrence Malick's
Badlands."--The Oregonian
"[Pollock] doesn't get a word wrong in this super-edgy American
Gothic stunner."--Elle
"Features a bleak and often nightmarish vision of the
decades following World War II, a world where redemption, on the
rare occasions when it does come to town, rides shotgun with
soul-scarring consequences."--The Onion, A.V. Club
"Mr. Pollock's new novel is, if anything, even darker than the
Knockemstiff, and its violence and religious preoccupations venture
into Flannery O'Connor territory."--The New York
Times
"Donald Ray Pollock's engaging and proudly violent first
novel...suggests a new category of fiction-grindhouse literary.
Subtle characterization: check. Well-crafted sentences: check.
Enthusiastic amounts of murder and mayhem: check, check."-The
Daily Beast
"Beneath the gothic horror is an Old Testament sense of a
moral order in the universe, even if the restoration of that order
itself requires violence."--The Columbus Dispatch
"A smorgasbord of grotesque characters trapped in a pressure-cooker
plot. . . . Brutal fun."--Esquire
"For a first novel so soaked in stale sweat and bright fresh blood,
Pollock's sweat is well-earned, and his blood is
wise."--Philadelphia Citypaper
"A gallery of reprobates and religious fanatics... are
multidimensional, flawed human beings."--Dayton Daily News
"[The Devil All the Time is] a world unto its own, a world vividly
and powerfully brought to life by a literary stylist who packs a
punch as deadly as pulp-fiction master Jim Thompson and as
evocative and morally rigorous as Russell Banks."-Philadelphia
Inquirer
"Stunning . . . . One wild story . . . gives us sex, murder, mayhem
and some of the most bizarre characters in fiction
today."-Richmond Times-Dispatch
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