In alternating chapters, we follow the bloody path of a thug named Bud, “a handsome man, at least in the retrograde style of the expired southern fifties he still loved so much.” Brutal and cowardly, Bud is a bully one moment, a flatterer the next, determined always to keep his violence spontaneous to avoid charges of premeditated murder. His only solace is a recurring dream “involving Jesus’s blood bathing the whole world and making it fresh and clean.” He’s convinced that the little twins know where some money is hidden, and even if they don’t, he can’t have them talking about what they saw him do to their mom. That sets up the plot’s simple predatory thrills, but Frazier keeps the tension elevated by winding the fuse around a number of dark corners — secrets in these characters’ pasts and the fact that all of them feel as if they’re “falling into some game with rules everybody knows but you.”
More human than one of Cormac McCarthy’s inexorable killing machines, Bud is closer to the wicked imagination of Flannery O’Connor, and as reviewer Robert Goolrick noted in The Post recently, “If the work is grotesque, and there’s blood, and Jesus is mentioned occasionally,” — check, check, check — “almost any writer will earn comparisons to that master of the violent, redneck, religious gothic novel.” Frazier is ultimately too mannered and romantic to be a disciple of O’Connor, but he’s certainly spent some time on her porch.
.JPG)
Loading...
Comments