Donald Ray Pollock's debut novel, "The Devil All the Time," is one wild story. Set primarily in small-town Ohio and West Virginia in the late'50s and early'60s, the novel gives us sex, murder, mayhem and some of the most bizarre characters in fiction today.
Pollock's first book, a collection of short stories called "Knockemstiff," was well received and reads like a modern-day "Winesburg, Ohio," as written by the love child of Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews. While that was a solid book, the stories occasionally did leave this reader wanting more, which "The Devil All the Time" delivers.
At the novel's core is a boy named Arvin, the son of a World War II veteran and religious fanatic who keeps a framed picture of Jesus in every room of the house save the kitchen. Looking at the image, Arvin "could almost hear the cracks of the whips, the taunts of Pilate's soldiers." This visceral impression of violence and grace sets the tone for Arvin's life.
In the opening of the novel, his mother is dying of cancer, and his father, when he isn't getting viciously drunk, spends his days dragging Arvin out to a "prayer log" in the woods, where they make animal sacrifices and pray over Arvin's mother.
Arvin eventually is sent to live with his grandmother in West Virginia, and as he grows up he takes on some of his father's bad habits — drinking and fighting and a propensity for well-timed, cold-blooded vengeance.
Beyond Arvin, the novel follows three other storylines: Carl and Sandy, who criss-cross the country in a series of sex-fetish murder rampages; Roy and Theodore, a pair of carnival preachers on the run from the law; and the corrupt Sheriff Bodecker, Sandy's brother, who is trying to keep Sandy's debauchery from ruining his re-election campaign.
Along the way, we meet all manner of sideshow freaks: a fat lawyer whose wife has slept with every man in town, Hollywood pornography thugs, prisoners with names like the Communist and Zit-Eater, and two carnival characters named Flapjack and the Flamingo Lady.
Pollock has a real gift for memorable descriptions. He gives us an "ex-railroader spotted with warty skin cancers," and another man who "was turning to fat and believed in signs and had a habit of picking his decayed teeth with a Buck pocketknife."
More importantly, Pollock has a real gift for making us care about these people, delivering lines that hit you like a punch to the kidney: "Carl realized there was a good chance he and Sandy would never make love again, that they were worse off than he had ever imagined."
Or, "It was nearly four in the morning, and somehow, with lots of luck and little regret, they had made it through another long winter day."
Or, "Something broke in him that day. For the first time, he could see that his whole life added up to absolutely nothing."
"'It's hard to live a good life,'" one character muses. "'It seems like the Devil don't ever let up.'"
In Pollock's world, the Devil rarely does let up. This novel might not appeal to the faint of heart, but for those who stick it out the ending is stunning, both for the artful way Pollock weaves these disparate plotlines together and for the way the sins of these characters (and their fathers) follow them to a moment both inevitable and surprising.
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