The Death of Sweet Mister: A Novel [Paperback]

Daniel Woodrell (Author), Dennis Lehane (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 24, 2012

Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him--she calls him Sweet Mister and attempts to boost his confidence and give him hope for his future. Shuggie's purported father, Red, is a brutal man with a short fuse who mocks and despises the boy. Into this small-town Ozarks mix comes Jimmy Vin Pearce, with his shiny green T-bird and his smart city clothes. When he and Glenda begin a torrid affair, a series of violent events is inevitably set in motion. The outcome will break your heart.

"This is Daniel Woodrell's third book set in the Ozarks and, like the other two, Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red, it peels back the layers from lives already made bare by poverty and petty crime." --Otto Penzler, "Penzler Pick, 2001"

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, June 2001: This is Daniel Woodrell's third book set in the Ozarks and, like the other two, Give Us a Kiss and Tomato Red, it peels back the layers from lives already made bare by poverty and petty crime, exposing the reader to the raw everyday hopes and fears of the poor and the helpless.

Told through the voice of an overweight 13-year-old boy named Shuggy Atkins, this is the story of Shug; the one person who loves him, his mother Glenda; and her boyfriend Red, a brutal and ignorant man. Red hates Shug but uses him to break into houses to steal drugs and anything else that can be sold. Glenda makes a meager living looking after the local cemetery and spends her time trying to keep Red amused and away from Shug, whom he loves to humiliate but whom she adores. Glenda is Shug's only champion. She calls him Sweet Mister as she continually boosts his confidence and promises a better life for him, if not for herself.

But when Glenda sees a beautiful, green Thunderbird with leather seats and its driver, Jimmy Vin Pearce, a chain of events is set into motion that will end in violence and bloodshed. Glenda must keep hidden from Red her infatuation with Jimmy Vin's money and fine clothes while she and Shug dream separate dreams of making a new life away from the violence.

Woodrell writes books that are small in volume but large in scope. It is impossible to put down this story of less than 200 pages until the final tragedy unfolds. --Otto Penzler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Woodrell (Tomato Red) excels at depicting the seedy side of Southern living, and in this brooding coming-of-age tale he revisits the hardscrabble Ozarks town of West Table, Mo., his dark, insistently realist prose packing a visceral punch. Overweight 13-year-old Shuggie Atkins, sharp and cynical for his age, lives in a ramshackle house situated in a "bone yard" with his perpetually drunk and dreamy mother, Glenda, and his savage stepfather, Red. Despite Red's hot temper, Glenda's tendency to behave foolishly and Shuggie's frustrations, their lives settle into a rough-hewn rhythm: Red comes and goes as he pleases; Shuggie tends to the graveyard grass and helps Red steal painkillers from helpless cancer patients; and Glenda sips her "tea" cocktails and flirts with Shuggie. Then balding but classy Jimmy Vin Pearce roars into their lives in a shiny green T-bird and begins an affair with Glenda. Overcome by jealousy, Shuggie must decide should he betray his mother or grant her happiness? Woodrell displays his characters in an unforgiving light, never succumbing to the urge to romanticize them. Through unsparing prose and deft characterization, he conveys the harsh philosophy best summed up in one of Glenda's rare bits of motherly advice: "You wake up in this here world, my sweet li'l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin' and stay tough 'til lights out have you learned that?" Woodrell's merciless realism is shot through with humor and rural wisdom; his work may not be to everyone's taste, but his bleak world is rendered with consummate artistry. (May 21)Forecast: Woodrell is a cult figure in England and elsewhere in Europe, where he was on the short list for the 2000 Dublin International Literary Award. Count on good reviews of this novel to raise his profile here.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (April 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316206148
• ISBN-13: 978-0316206143
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Chilling June 14, 2001

By Colin Paterson

Format:Hardcover

Having read and admired several of Daniel Woodrell's books, I was very pleased to see that this one had been released.

As with the previous "Tomato Red", this one is well-written and wondrous in the simple, unadorned tone of the narration. However both of these books are difficult to gush over.

These are dark gems. And they lack the allure that the common reader expects.

When we are moved to feel joy or sorrow by an author, we have no trouble considering that genius is involved. With Woodrell though, the emotions are more complex. And he can stir up things which we might prefer to have left hidden and forgotten.

This is definitely genius. Especially when someone such as Woodrell accomplishes this with a subtlety that is remarkably profound.

In this book, we are given the sad story of thirteen-year-old, overweight Shug Atkins. His is about the furthest thing from an "aw shucks" coming-of-age tale you can get.

Shug and his mother Glenda live in a shack on the grounds of the cemetery they maintain. Here they are plagued by the abusive Red. Red may or may not be Shug's biological father -- he probably isn't but this has never been made clear to Shug. Despite that, Red acts the father role and displays some of the most despicable ways possible for a grown man -- he is definitely an inappropriate role model.

Glenda has always relied on her looks even though they haven't gotten her very far. She's about little more than sex and as age advances has little in her life but maintaining an anaesthetic level of drunkenness. Far from being a perfect mother, she is still Shug's most likely ally -- a relationship that has all the possibilities for the perverse one can imagine.

Shug's world is full of dysfunction. He has been exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, hardened criminality, illicit sexual behavior and all manner of wickedness. But he doesn't know any better. And in the course of this novel, things go from bad to worse. In the end, the situation is beyond help.

Where "Tomato Red" impressed me with a story of what tragedy might happen when people fail to follow society's norms, this book shows what happens to people who live by the norms and meet tragedy by tangling with people who do not play by those rules.

I felt stunned after reading this book. Honestly. I sat and thought about it and couldn't shake it. It was like having heard a bomb go off nearby -- too close to feel secure.

This is certainly a remarkable book.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Down He Forgot As Up He Grew February 1, 2003

By sweetmolly

Format:Paperback

Have you ever truly, physically "ached" with pity? When I closed "Death of Sweet Mister," I shut my eyes and hoped to forget Shugg Akins, but knew I never would. I just sat there dry-eyed and hollow. This is quite a testament to author Daniel Woodrell's skill, but at a price I'm not certain I wanted to pay.

Shugg aka "Morris" aka Sweet Mister is fat and thirteen, a bit of an outcast with his peers (because he's fat? poor? at the bottom of the poor white trash social scale? -- we don't know.) Shugg, our narrator is bright, quick, and a pragmatist through and through. He goes along to get along. His only champion is his mother Glenda, a pretty lady whose looks didn't get her very far, whose only weapons are persistent sensuousness and an ever-present silver thermos containing rum-laced "tea." Shugg's nominal father (probably not) is Red Akins, a cruel, brutal, truly evil man whose purpose in life is drinking, drugging and make certain Shugg and Glenda's lives were spent in abject humiliation. Red is not smart, but he is a shrewd and cunning, formidable foe. "Foe" is the wrong word for Red; you'd no more oppose him than an evil force of nature. I once read of an Australian Wandering Spider, one of the most venomous spiders in the world who is so aggressive that if you try to kill him, say with a broom, he climbs right up the broom handle and goes after you, and isn't satisfied with one bite--he keeps on biting till he's through. Red is a subhuman Wandering Spider.

Red and his pal Basil drag Shugg with them to steal drugs from terminally ill people and doctors' offices, the theory being if Shugg gets caught, as a juvenile, he will only be reprimanded. Shugg complies in his sheer terror of Red, and descriptions of this overweight, clumsy boy trying to be a second story man are both pathetic and ironically funny. What Shugg lacks in physical aptitude, he makes up for in clever quick wittedness far beyond anything Red would understand.

When Glenda has a torrid affair with a man who has a green T-Bird, the inexorable tragedy must play itself out. Everyone is in place: murderous Red, loyal Basil, and Shugg who has been taught to love his mother too much and knows he has not a song, but a scream, in his heart. Glenda's Sweet Mister is gone.

Woodrell is powerful, concise and unsparing. "Death of Sweet Mister'" is compelling, well-written, but not for everyone. With a tragedy, there are no alternate endings.

-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Been waiting for Wooddrell to tackle subject... June 26, 2001

By "fridalover"

Format:Hardcover

of incest. I knew he'd finally get to it and wow!- he does it with such smooth and seamless prose and just the right amount of tension that he rivals James M. Caine's renderings on such a shadowy subject. As with previous works, Woodrell proves he's a writer's writer with this dark portrait (reminds one of Faulkner's Sanctuary) of southern culture on the skids. Woodrell's style is so economical and subtle that the tension build-up throughout the novel doesn't hit until the final scenes and then it hits you right between the eyes, sharp and swift,like you're a frog being gigged by some redneck, hillbilly swilling cheap beer and looking for trouble beneath a pale moon.