Customer Reviews

Devil's Dream

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a wonderful book. Quite often, a book is real good until the ending, and then I'm let down, But this has a really good ending too. This tale is really excellent: a verbal piece of art. I liked all the lineage and interconnections in this large musical family. I learned what it's like to have mucic within you -- to write as well as perform. I liked the character developments -- no one all good or all bad, but all very interesting. I recommend this book highly. One learns about US history, country music, human nature, and it's entertaining to boot!

This book is, along with P. F. Kluge's novel "Eddie and the Cruisers," possibly the best novel about what music means and where it comes from that I've read. The sense of time and place is unerringly evoked, the characters are simultaneously archetypal and idiosynchratic, and the overlap of both generations and musical styles makes a rich, rewarding experience. Really, really top-notch stuff.

This is another of Lee Smith's novels that progresses chronologically through generations, each successive generation represented through a group of narrators (like Oral History) and again her ability to delineate character through that character's voice is amazing. I really respect her as a writer and will keep reading her books until I have exhausted their availability. This time there are five generations of the country music industry, going from backwoods denizens of Grassy Creek who are downright suspicious of fiddle music, trusting no music but the "old hard high" hymns and progressing on down past the Grand Ole Opry to today. I have often made fun of the maudlin excesses of Nashville: when my adult son was a toddler, friends, my wife and I used to give the kid quarters to put in the jukebox in the St. Johnsbury diner to play "I'm Hiring a Wino to Decorate Our Home." (Evidently folks from the Academy where one friend worked did not come to the diner, and the regulars there seemed to think it was cute). Anyway, I was surprised by how affecting I found this book to be. Smith finds the real people behind "genuine country," or at least she creates an illusion that she has captured the actual personalities in their reactions to the hard-won petty triumphs and the terrible sudden tragedies and all the rest behind the sappy songs. I liked the book a lot and Smith obviously loved her subject, judging by the pages of acknowledgements at the end and her comments in them.

Lee Smith once again writes about mountain people and their ways of life. She chronologically takes the reader from the early musical interests of a family who become sensations in Music City. The story is heart-warming, real, and quirky rolled into one. A definite must-read

The Devils Dream describes beautifully the strength a dream of fame can have on a person. Katie Cocker is the main character once she is introduced you can clearly see that she struggles with life. Like many of our lives today, she deals with her obsessive parents and lost dreams. She wants to renew what her family has already started. Music is the way to do this. Each chapter in the book starts in a mew period of time from a different characters point of view. The book flows like this untill Katie is weaved into the story. The characters discussed before her are still around and are all a part of her family. Katie ties-up a legacy of music that has been brought down from generation to generation. Lee Smith keeps music flowing throughout the whole book. She almost uses it to much. She fits each paragraph with a lot of unwanted attention drawn toward the names and lyrics of songs. This all draws away from the story. The whole book is based on a dream of one day being famous and rich. Music is the step this enlarrged family thakes toward that dream. This book will cause a realization that dreams aren't something that can be fufilled with the click of a button but they must be worked at. This book can inspire people to strive toward their goals and dreams. If you don't enjoy music and the creation of it then don't read this book. If you need to be inspired then do.

I don't mean the above as a pun (although in this context it would certainly work as one.) I found that this book stayed with me long after I read it because of Lee Smith's skillful use of imagery and of irony. I know that I will never forget the nearly-mystical love story of Dory and Richard Burlage. What impressed me the most about this book is the absolute authenticity of detail that allows the reader to really feel a part of the stories.

The book was hard to read and get into at first because it written in an Appalachian vernacular and the narrator changes. However, the book itself is pretty good, and I think reading it again would let me have a much better appreciation for it.

I listened to a audio book of this. I don't think I would have had the patience to read the dialect but the readers (there were several involved - men and women) did a great job of speaking and singing more or less as the people in the book would have. It was a little long and repetitious but there are some great sequences.

Being a fan of Lee Smith, I looked forward to reading The Devil's Dream, and I'm sad to say, I was disappointed. Although Smith is a southerner, the dialect in early chapters is hardly readable and not true to the original dialect. A southerner myself, I know the dialect, and characters would not say what Smith has them saying--it's a mixture of older and more modern dialect, and a reader not from The South would have no understanding of the words or be able to put them into coherence. I was simply uninterested in conversations in the early chapters of the book. The attempt at recreating the southern, Appalachian (pronounced Appa-lay-chun)dialect is inconsistent at best and unintelligible to non-Appalachian readers. I've loved her other books, but I had to relegate this one to my Kindle saved books halfway through. Maybe I'll get through it later. Sorry, Lee.