Smonk: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Tom Franklin (Author)
Key Phrases: tom franklin, ray bees, speckled man, Old Texas, Red Man, Deputy Ambrose (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
E.O. Smonk is an ugly, unwashed, murdering rapist who has terrorized the small town of Old Texas, Ala., for years. In 1911, the town summons Smonk to stand trial, and a nonstop blood-orgy of brutality and destruction is the result in Franklin's gloriously debauched second novel (following Hell at the Breech). After Smonk's goons assault the Old Texas courthouse and kill the town's menfolk, reformed former Smonk associate turned lawman Will McKissick pursues Smonk. Meanwhile, a posse of Christian deputies chase teenage whore Evavangeline through the Gulf Coast, but the girl is a skilled killer, too, and the trail of her victims spans the region. McKissick follows Smonk's trail out of and back into Old Texas, while Evavangeline drifts into the town, where all the children are dead except McKissick's 12-year-old son and the widows lay out their dead husbands on their dining tables. The town's sordid past, about to be exposed, involves a rabies-ravaged one-armed preacher, a rabid dog named Lazarus the Redeemer, incest and a church full of dead boys dressed in Sunday best. Fast-paced and unrelentingly violent, Franklin's western isn't for everyone, but readers looking for a strange and savage tale can't go wrong. (On sale Aug. 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"A David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino codirection of Deadwood . . . a world where not one person knows an iota of goodness." (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review )

"fast-paced and unrelentingly violent...readers looking for a strange and savage tale can't go wrong." (Publishers Weekly )

"Franklin's talent for the completely offbeat and outrageous illuminates a world that is at once vibrantly alive and completely human." (Times-Picayune (New Orleans) )

"[Smonk] mixes William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, and Deadwood's David Milch, Franklin pulls off a unique Western saga." (Entertainment Weekly )

"Part western, part Southern gothic, yet wholly original, this is a beef jerky of a story [.] full of flavor" (Tampa Tribune )

"I am amazed at Tom Franklin's power" (Philip Roth )

"An edgy, quirky, bawdy look at the days of cowboys and shootouts, Smonk is the real deal." (David Milch, Creator of Deadwood )

"Maintaining the dark tone of his excellent first novel, Franklin goes for the gothic in [this] weirdly fascinating tale" (Kirkus Reviews )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (August 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006084681X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060846817
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #726,295 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distinctive and Dark, December 17, 2006

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'd never come across Franklin before, but this Southern Gothic retelling of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is so distinctive that I'm curious to see what the rest of his writing is like. Although ostensibly set in 1911 somewhere in southern Alabama, it has a very hazy quality to it that suggests it could be anywhere in the deep south or southwest, any time between 1870-1900. The story proceeds along two tracks: one follows a terrifying man called Smonk, and the other follows a 15 year old prostitute named Evavangeline.

We meet Smonk at a trial convened by the men of Old Texas, where he is accused of murder after his yearlong terrorizing of their town. Unfortunately for them, the dirty, limping, deformed, consumptive, syphilitic, hellraiser smells a setup, and the scene quite literally explodes in an orgy of bloodletting which manage to evoke both the brutality and realism of Peckinpah and the bizarre cartoonishness of Tarantino all at the same time. Smonk makes his escape and begins a long game of cat-and-mouse with the town's only two male survivors. Meanwhile, we meet Evavangeline as she flees in flagrante from a strange roving vigilante group who is chasing her for being a sodomite (her young form was apparently mistaken for that of a boy's). Her journey takes her through the drought-ridden Gulf Coast and toward Old Texas. Along the way, she proves just as deadly as Smonk, leaving a trail of gruesomely dispatched corpses behind her.

As we learn about both characters' pasts, we also learn about their pursuers. William McKissick is Smonk's former partner, now turned semi-honest lawman. Under the belief Smonk killed his boy, McKissick conducts his hunt with blood oozing out of an untended belly wound and Smonk's glass eye between his cheek and gum. Evavangeline is chased by a posse of "Christian Deputies" led by a northern fop with no control whatsoever over his band of rascals. The action takes place across a surreal barren landscape of dead sugarcane and rabies-infected dogs and rats. Ultimately, everything leads back to Old Texas, a town which mysteriously has no children. As with many a horror movie, the town's long-held horrifying secret is finally revealed as the karmic justification for all the killings, eviscerations, rapes, and ultraviolence over the preceding pages.

This is an impossible book to pigeonhole. Franklin's Old Testament update is incredibly dark, gruesome, and violent (a note of warning, incest crops up more than once). And at the same time, it's so over-the-top that it can be awfully funny at times. Franklin's crafted a richly distinctive dialect and cadence for his characters' dialogue that helps in creating a unique sense of place. The one downside is that it's not set off like normal dialogue, which can make it a little hard to follow at times. I've definitely not read another book like this all year, but one like this is probably all I can handle. Highly recommended, but only for those with strong stomachs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Over The Top, October 31, 2006

By	J. Robinson "aficionado of well-turned phrase... (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A quick and enjoyable read, "Smonk" is vintage Tom Franklin -- unsavory characters, hilarious dialogue, sudden violence, & moral ambiguity. This is his homage to Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," complete with adolescent protagonist, gory & senseless slaughter, descriptive chapter subheadings, and even the use of McCarthy's made-up word 'swapt' (as in "the knife swapt off his head..."). I had a grand ol' time reading this and I suspect others will, too; it will provide you a rollicking good time if you can stomach the violent imagery and lack of any redeeming character (I suppose Smonk's elderly sidekick/father figure Ike comes closest to being "good," and he ain't even that close!). Though it intends to find a niche as a 'southern,' Franklin's novel, for all intents and purposes, is a 'western.' It has definite connections with Grand Guignol and Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," but I think the term "over the top" is the best description I can give this book. Everything is exagerrated: the bloodshed, the physical deformities & diseases of various characters, their secrets, the extreme settings replete with epidemics of drought, rabies, etc. For me personally, I still think Franklin's book of short stories, "Poachers," is his greatest achievement to date, but "Smonk" gave me a couple of solid gut-laughs, lots of head-shaking at the absurd situations he imagines, several breath-taking instances of incredible dialogue and characterization, and moments of genuine awe at some of his dead-on descriptive details. A very gifted writer spinning an enthralling & entertaining yarn. Thanks, Tom!

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars some good elements, but overdone, August 26, 2006

By	David W. Straight (knoxville, tennessee United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Reading Smonk made me think of Sam Peckinpaugh's fabulous movie
"The Wild Bunch". In Wild Bunch, things would be going along
quite peacefully, and then there would be a terrible flurry of
violence ("terrible" in the sense of Yeats' "a terrible beauty
was born" about the Easter uprising) done in a semi-slow-motion
to accentuate the violence. The Wild Bunch is also like the
oft-heard comment about war to the effect of "two days of
boredom and one minute of sheer terror". Or think of Lonesome
Dove, which has many very violent scenes--but these scenes are
not continuous.

In Smonk, it's rather like seeing Wild Bunch or Lonesome Dove
with almost all of the quieter times deleted. The murders,
shootings, disembowelings, throat-slashings, rapes, castrations,
etc, are almost non-stop. After a while it gets rather numbing.
Franklin's other novel, Hell at the Breech, has some violent
scenes, but the pace is much more measured, and Hell at the
Breech is a fine novel--well worth reading.

Franklin writes well, and Smonk starts off in a promising
manner, but I found myself not liking or having emphathy with
any of the characters. Tony Soprano is not a nice person, but
you can have empathy for him, and he has some good qualities
to go with the bad ones--you could enjoy having dinner with
him. But I didn't think I'd enjoy having dinner with any of the people
in Smonk.