I found this to be one of the more remarkable examples of building characters, describing their interior lives, and letting the reader live alongside them and their decisions, all in incredibly realistic and moving ways. Your heart breaks for (some of) these Mulvaneys, and those vivid renderings of their thoughts, as these events unfold, elicit even deeper empathy throughout. It's one of those works where, though I cannot personally imagine making some of the choices this family does, being guided through the story on their thoughts and subtle actions makes them seem all but destined to happen. "It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--no one knows how to fix it."

Reviewed on Saturday, November 4th, 2023, 6:08am.

This book was not what I was expecting, reading more like a novel than a historical document, which made it quite easy to get through, like a breeze through the Spanish moss. It was a nice touch by Berendt to tell the story of Jim Williams' murder of Danny Hansford through the lens of all the characters he came across during his time in Savannah, painting a fuller picture of the social and political climate (which are, unsurprisingly, inextricably linked) rather than simply telling a true crime murder story. This, for me, made it more of an entertaining read rather than an informative one.

Reviewed on Monday, January 8th, 2024, 2:12pm.

Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!"

Reviewed on Thursday, December 28th, 2023, 5:39am.

What a trip. Proulx displays such a profound mastery of place here, and I'm not sure this was her intention, that the descriptions of Newfoundland are so vivid and realized that I cannot imagine a place I would rather be any less than there. The cast of characters are rich with personality and the setting is so heavy that it pervades every inch of the novel once Quoyle gets there. I'm not sure if this is typically her writing style, as this is my first time reading her work, but her style itself was very unique as well, with the bursts of descriptive clauses to paint her pictures.

Reviewed on Monday, October 23rd, 2023, 10:48am.

A nice continuation of where the story is going. I'm a little bit removed from when I actually read this, so I don't quite remember exactly what happened.

Reviewed on Sunday, May 15th, 2022, 12:00am.