Nearing fifty, Joe Ransom won't slow down, not in his pickup, not with a gun-and certainly not with women. But all the fast living in Mississippi won't fill the hunger Joe can't name. At fifteen, Gary Jones is already slipping through the cracks. Part of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, he's desperate for a way out. He finds it in Joe. Together they follow a twisting map to redemption-or ruinAn understated, powerful, beautiful evocation of a place, a time, a people.
Joe
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With this powerful, immensely affecting novel Brown comes into his own as a writer of stature. As in his previous books ( Dirty Work ; Big Bad Love ), his subjects are poor Southern rednecks who exist from day to day, from hand to mouth, in tar-paper shacks and shabby mobile homes. Some are hard, mean and utterly lacking in moral fiber; others, such as the eponymous protagonist, try to live with integrity and dignity despite limited opportunities, despite the ingrained, ubiquitous habit of drinking prodigious amounts of beer and whiskey. Joe Ransom is almost 50, newly divorced, with bitter recollections of years spent in the pen for assaulting a police officer while drunk. A product of his time and place, Joe is reckless, self-destructive, hard-driving, hard-drinking, sometimes ruthless, but he is essentially kindhearted and decent. Joe manages a crew of black laborers who poison trees for a lumber company. When he gives a temporary job to teenage Gary Jones, part of a migratory family so destitute the boy has never seen a toothbrush or understood the significance of a traffic light, Joe is touched by the boy's dogged determination to work although Gary's alcoholic, vicious, amoral father takes the money as soon as Gary earns it. In his own laconic way Joe acts as mentor for Gary, until, in the novel's wrenching conclusion, fate and Joe's own stubborn morality wrench them apart. Seamlessly constructed, the novel hums with perfect pitch, with language as lean and unsparing as the poverty-mired Mississippi rural community Brown depicts. He has achieved mastery of descriptive detail, demonstrated in scenes that variously depict the contents of a country general store, a bloody dogfight, men butchering a deer, Joe cleaning out bullet wounds in his arm without an anesthetic, a punishing rainstorm. The dialogue is as natural as spring water. Brown never condescends to his uneducated, gambling-addicted, casually promiscuous characters; with compassion and eloquence, he illumines their painful lives and gives them worth.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The author of Dirty Work ( LJ 7/89) scores tough points with this disturbing look at the underside of rural life. Joe Ransom is 43, a hard-drinking, rough-edged ex-con who's used up most of the cards in his personal deck. Foreman of a Mississippi lumber company's "tree-poisoning" crew, he meets Gary Jones, age 15, seeking work. Gary's father is an itinerant farm worker, a man so thieving, murderous, and unwashed that Faulkner's Snopeses look genteel in comparison. Gary has never been to school, owned a toothbrush, or had enough to eat. He wants out of the everyday horror of his life. His dream is modest: to own an old pickup, to buy enough food to feed his addled mother and silent little sister. Joe likes Gary, and between backsliding bouts of boozing, whoring, and gambling, tries to help. The bond they forge and a slim hope for redemption link them in a shattering, inevitable climax. Recommended.
- Le nore Hart, Machipongo, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Le nore Hart, Machipongo, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark Places,
By Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Joe: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is one of those books that I have to re-read every couple of years or so. And every time, I am pleased to find that it's as good as I remember. The first time I read "Joe," I had just discovered "Big Bad Love" and I could not wait to read more Larry Brown. But whereas the previous collection of stories had humor and pathos and sad comedy in heaping portions, this is a book about dark places. The first book written after Brown had achieved his much-sought-after degree of success did not seem to find him in a pleasant mood. Relocate James Ellroy in the South and lengthen his machinegun sentences into paragraphs. Contemporize Cormac McCarthy. That's kind of what this book is like. The Joe of the title is a man of questionable morals and steeped in prejudices that seem like self-fulfilling prophecies. He posions trees for a lumber company for a living, and then when the seasons change he plants new ones. He has more money and can kick more (...) than anybody around him and those factors make him despise almost everyone, including himself. Following him as he tries to create some good in the world is heart-wrenching and by no means sentimental. I hope they never adapt this novel into a film. The prose and characterizations are so rich that they produce a movie in your head that is crystal clear and downright flawless.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Southern Fiction,
By
This review is from: Joe (Paperback)
"Joe" is the first book I'd read by talented author Larry Brown and I have to say I'm glad."Joe" held my attention in many ways-despite being a very large book to read. The main character is not perfect, some people might call him a straight up jerk. Somehow when I kept reading about this man, and all his flaws I couldn't help but to like him. Mr. Brown made him so real, so human and so imperfect, that I felt like I could know a JOE living next door or down the street even. However in realife-very rarely do you get to see and understand a person, like the author made me understand Joe and the reasoning behind his motives.
I highly recommend this book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An A** Pocket Full of Whiskey,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Joe (Paperback)
Listen folks. Hands down, Larry Brown is the best southern writer since Faulkner (though I do get tired of the comparisons because honestly, Brown and Faulkner share very little in common other than the location of their stories). Nevertheless, what is obvious when you pick up JOE is that Brown thoroughly understands the human condition. This novel brilliantly and deftly explores family ties, poverty, abandonment, and even a tad bit of racism. Nothing is overstated though. It's a slow rolling boil of a book that begs to be read patiently and lovingly.
I really do not want to give much plot away here. Instead, I'll simply say that if you do not feel empathy for these characters, if you do not long for Joe to rescue both himself and the young man who he takes under his wing, if you do not feel the horrors that the young girls and their mother experience at the hands of their father, and if you do not cringe at the brutal realism on display in this novel's pages, then you are either insane or dead. If you only read one more book for as long as you live, pick up this masterpiece and savor every sentence, every beautiful (and occasionally horrible) image, and a vision of the south so pure and unfiltered, you'll find yourself shaking your head when you realize Brown died long before his time and deserves to be remembered and recognized for the humble literary god that he is.
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