Easter Weekend (Voices of the South) - Softcover

Bottoms, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807122777 ISBN 13: 9780807122778

Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr, 1998

Synopsis

One Easter weekend in Macon, Georgia, two brothers--with big dreams--kidnap a rich college kid for ransom. But a murderous gangster raises the stakes. In this gritty novel of loss, violence, and redemption, a distinguished American poet explores the dark world last seen in the novels of James M. Cain, where death lurks everywhere and a new beginning is always just out of reach.

About this title

About the Author

David Bottoms holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University and served as Poet Laureate of Georgia for twelve years. His first book, SHOOTING RATS AT THE BIBB COUNTY DUMP, was chosen by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared widely in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, Poetry, and The Paris Review, as well as in sixty anthologies and textbooks. Bottoms is the author of eight books of poems, two novels, and a book of essays and interviews.

From Publishers Weekly

Poet ( Shooting Rats at the Bibb Country Dump ) and novelist ( Any Cold Jordan ) Bottoms has written a quiet, economical novel about a botched amateur kidnapping in a small Georgia town. Connie Holtzclaw, a failed boxer of limited intelligence, is enlisted by his brother Carl in a plan to kidnap a rich college student and hold him for ransom. They abduct the young man only to find their scheme foiled by a local gangster attempting to collect on one of Carl's bad gambling debts. Both Carl and the gangster have sadistic inclinations that complicate the plot; the scenes of graphic violence are among the most vivid in the book, which otherwise alternates between somewhat platitudinal dialogues and quietly impressive prose passages. Connie's troubled relationship with his brother is sensitively rendered, as are his wistful yearnings for his girlfriend Rita, a waitress at the local Waffle Shop. Using realistic details to convey the monotony of life in a decaying community, Bottoms moves the narrative determinedly but sometimes ploddingly along; yet the conclusion, with its seemingly requisite act of violence, is taut and shocking.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0807122777
• ISBN 13: 9780807122778
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 216