The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell (2011)

Mixed feelings about this one. One story stands out as brilliant; there are a number of very good ones, within certain boundaries; two are a bit poorer. These stories indicate that Woodrell's world centres around the Ozarks in mid-America. An almost typically 'backwoods' place. A majority of his people are the sort of person an outsider would have come to expect if that terminology is used, apart from the fact that they are darkly modern in their failings: they're not lonely and crazed, they're drug-addled and crazed. They're not tormented by the rampages of "Indians" or bears, but rather their own war experiences, or a medicated madness from within. His style is poetically documentary; this is where one criticism occasionally rears its head: there can be a tryhard quality to some of the phrasing. An example: 'A damp virtuosity of misshapen reflections on the street...' That virtuosity pushes it too hard. But those times stand out because, relatively speaking, they're rare. The poetry in the prose often works well. I think the quality these stories lack for me is exhilaration. The thrill which goes through me at the best writing is somehow missing here, there's an inert quality which I can't avoid. There's something in the straight out documentary approach, some spark of deep inspiration, which doesn't catch. The exception is the splendid 'Black Step', a story of a young soldier on loan back to his family farm after unspecified PTSD, and of his coming to some new understandings about love, death, self and family in the small break before he is summoned back, which soars to greater heights and sets the brainstem fizzing. Others are often quietly impressive but lack the fizz. I'd be interested to read a novel, to see whether he can reach places cumulatively that he might not in the short form.