Snakehunter [Paperback]

Chuck Kinder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1991

This novel is a moving evocation of a time and place — an Appalachian boyhood in the 1940s. The book describes the coming of age of Speer Whitfield, raised by a zany spinster aunt and a family of memorable characters: a sister who is slowly dying, a mother mistreated by various men, a mysterious grandfather.

Editorial Reviews

Review

It is a beautifully acheived novel, evoked in crystal-bright incidents which bend neither to sentiment nor easy bitterness. -- —Scott Turow, S.F. Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1973

It shares with Agee and Wolfe a scope which is at once of and beyond its regional roots. -- — Chris Holbook, Ace, February 1992

Snakehunter is an excellant novel....One would like to secure for this excellently crafted book all the readers one can. -- —Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post, April 8, 1974

About the Author

Chuck Kinder is the author of three novels: Snakehunter, The Silver Ghost, and the recently published Honeymooners, A Cautionary Tale. He currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Gnomon Press; First Edition edition (December 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0917788508
• ISBN-13: 978-0917788505
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,249,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Snakehunter's Time Has Come Again (or at last), April 27, 2001

By 

Jeff Martin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snakehunter (Paperback)

Chuck Kinder's Snakehunter is not your typical coming of age fiction and the protagonist, Speer, is anything but your run-of the-mill boy.

After his father's death, Speer and his mother find they must relocate from city-life to rural West Virginia, to the hometown of his mother. Speer is thrust into his strange mountain family; including a pair of overbearing, sometimes well-meaning aunts; an abusive overweight cousin who calls himself Hercules; a goodnatured uncle who serves as a buffer to the family friction; a grandfather whose past, legend has it, included murder; and Speer's beloved intellectual cousin Catherine, a happy-hour-all-day gal with, at least initially, a placid boozer's imagination easily accessable to Speer.

Sounds straightforward enough, huh?

Enter Kinder's manipulation of time and place. He brings the reader back and forth over a twenty year period, without breaking the stories pace or cohesivness. He also uses sociological examples to give the story unique perspective on a wide range of "interesting" tribal traditions.

Kinder's language is beautiful, especially dealing with scenery and nature, which serves as a nessessary backdrop to this well told story.

Snakehunter is a feast of form; it prompts one to wonder: How did Kinder weave this tale together without allowing the seams to show through? Snakehunter's form was possibly ahead of its time in the cynical years surrounding the Nixon administration (1973). Read this novel tomorrow. Appreciate its freshness, its language, its warmth, its grit, its honesty and, most importantly, Kinder's guts.