Book Review : Donald Ray Pollock - The Devil All The Time (2011)
Order THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME here
Some people were born just so they could be buried.
Religion is an interesting idea, if you look at it from a distance. Surrendering to something you have never seen, but believe is true is strange enough, yet surrendering your entire life to an hypothetical entire bliss is one hell of a leap of faith. Donald Ray Pollock's first novel The Devil All The Time also struggles with the concept. It also happens to be that novel that made me go: ''Goddamn, isn't it the best things ever written or what?'' A book can pull this reaction out of me once a year maybe, twice if I'm being lucky. We barely went through the first quarter that The Devil All The Time already elicited this reaction from me.
I am going to try and keep my cool and give you rational reasons why it is probably the best novel I have read in several years, but in the end, you should just read it. Read The Devil All The Time and go through the same amazing experience that swept me off my feet.
There are several different storylines in The Devil All The Time, yet they all are carrying their own weight. I guess the main protagonist would be Arvin Russell, a boy raised by pious parents who had to live through the meltdown of his father during his mother's last months. The Devil All The Time is structured around the first eighteen years of Arvin's life. There are several other characters who takes just about as much place as him: Carl and Sandy travel through America to kill hitchhikers and come back to Ohio a couple of times a year, Lee Bodecker is a small town sheriff who is trying to keep his people under his absolute control and Roy and Theodore are a preaching act that failed the ultimate test of faith. All this beautiful people are at the center of The Devil All The Time and try to survive the night each in their own way.
It would be fair to consider faith a character in the novel. Every action in The Devil All The Time is dictated (or is the result) of a character's religious beliefs. You could even argue that Carl and Sandy's murderous debauchery is a byproduct of religious depression (Carl shows several signs of being in the closet). Faith is what makes The Devil All The Time works so wonderfully well, because it pits characters against one another.
Donald Ray Pollock created something truly special in Arvin Russell, a young man shaped by his troublesome relationship to his father's unwavering faith in God. He is becoming an adult who understands the importance of taking responsibility for his actions and turns away from God in his own, personal way. Teenage characters who show true depth of character and an understand of things are few and far between in literature, but Arvin Russell is one of them.
''Jesus, I hate it when they cry like that,'' she said. ''That's the worst.''
Carl shook his head as he flipped through the boy's wallet one more time. ''Girl, you got to get over that shit,'' he said. ''Them tears he shed is the kind of thing makes for a good picture. Those last few minutes was the only time in his whole miserable life when he wasn't faking it.''
One of the reasons I liked The Devil All The Time so much is that it reminded me of one of my favourite authors, James Ellroy. Both men have their own style, but there is obvious common grounds : their use of era-specific vernacular, their fascination with the American past and their laser-sharp vision. If you loved the L.A Quartet as much as I did, you will find in The Devil All The Time the same quality of vision of this troublesome era of American history where the fate of the nation was adrift.
What makes James Ellroy and Donald Ray Pollock so complimentary is that Ellroy has been focused on the fate of Los Angeles and Pollock is fascinated with countryside America, the part of U.S that was left behind in the post-WWII era. Both also turned their subject into timeless objects. If there weren't allusions to WWII in The Devil All The Time, it would not be that easy to pinpoint the time period.
I haven't went crazy over a novel like I went crazy over The Devil All The Time for about three or four years. Last time I got that stimulated intellectually and emotionally, I believe I was reading Anthony Neil Smith's mystery Choke On Your Lies. I'm a good audience in general, it's not difficult to entertain me, but moving me is the real challenge and The Devil All The Time lived up to it in every possible way. There is depth and complexity of character, yet there is also a tremendous scope as the novel sprawls over about two decades.
The Devil All The Time is ambitious, rabid and absolutely fearless, just the way I love my books. Just the way I'd like everything to be. I suppose the vivid imagery and the godlessness is not for everybody, but I don't think that book is for everybody. The Devil All The Time is meant for the people with the strength to face its purpose.
9.0/10
