The Death of Sweet Mister - Hardcover

Woodrell, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399147519 ISBN 13: 9780399147517

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2001

Synopsis

The final chapter in Daniel Woolrell's Ozark trilogy peels the lid back on a dysfunctional Missouri family as infidelity threatens to consume their world in violence and terror. By the author of Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red. 17,500 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Penzler Pick, June 2001: This is Daniel Woodrell's third book set in the Ozarks and, like the other two, Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red, it peels back the layers from lives already made bare by poverty and petty crime, exposing the reader to the raw everyday hopes and fears of the poor and the helpless.

Told through the voice of an overweight 13-year-old boy named Shuggy Atkins, this is the story of Shug; the one person who loves him, his mother Glenda; and her boyfriend Red, a brutal and ignorant man. Red hates Shug but uses him to break into houses to steal drugs and anything else that can be sold. Glenda makes a meager living looking after the local cemetery and spends her time trying to keep Red amused and away from Shug, whom he loves to humiliate but whom she adores. Glenda is Shug's only champion. She calls him Sweet Mister as she continually boosts his confidence and promises a better life for him, if not for herself.

But when Glenda sees a beautiful, green Thunderbird with leather seats and its driver, Jimmy Vin Pearce, a chain of events is set into motion that will end in violence and bloodshed. Glenda must keep hidden from Red her infatuation with Jimmy Vin's money and fine clothes while she and Shug dream separate dreams of making a new life away from the violence.

Woodrell writes books that are small in volume but large in scope. It is impossible to put down this story of less than 200 pages until the final tragedy unfolds. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

Daniel Woodrell is the author of six novels, including the New York Times Notable Books Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red, which won the PEN West Fiction Award in l998. Though often compared to William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell, he is in fact an original. As The New York Times Book Review wrote, "He's only drawing from the same well they did, but with a different take, a different voice, a sharper sense of irony."

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0399147519
• ISBN 13: 9780399147517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196