An audio book.
American gothic, I think. In an isolated US town in the 50s-60s there are troubled souls.
When Willard returns home after war, he sees a beautiful waitress, Charlotte, in The Wooden Spoon. He goes back and they marry. When she's dying at 30 he makes their son Arvin pray. He kills animals and hangs them on trees to let them rot. He kills Henry his landlord, a lawyer. Then he kills himself.
The lawyer's wife was having sex with anyone new. Her latest conquest was their black gardener. The lawyer had been watching them.
Theodore (in a wheelchair, paedophile, plays guitar) and Roy are dramatic preachers. Roy kills his wife Helen as an experiment in surviving death. It fails. They leave, eventually joining a sort of freak show. A daughter, Lenora is left behind. She and Arvin are brought up together by Arvin's grandmother. He violently assaults schoolboys who call her names. When she's 17 the married preacher Teagarden starts having regular sex with her. When she's pregnant she kills herself.
Sandy (who used to work in the Wooden Spoon) and husband Carl spend summer holidays picking up hitch-hikers. Carl photographs Sandy having sex with the hitch-hikers then kills them.
Hank, the store owner, buys cheap whores.
Lee Bodecker, a cop, is the brother of Sandy. He uses his position to make money (killing, if need be)
Theodore dies. Roy hits the road, gets picked up by Sandy and Carl, and is killed by them.
Arvin kills Teagarden, leaves in a hurry, gets picked up by Sandy and Carl, who he kills. He returns to his home town. Bodecker, who had been kind to Arvin when he reported his father's death finds him in the sacrificed animals shrine and kills him.
Other reviews
- Goodreads
- Grimdark (made up of several vignettes that seem tangentially related at first but, at about two-thirds of the way through, connect and pay off in a big way. Being the dark and tragic tale it is with many southern gothic sentiments, comparisons to Cormac McCarthy abound. In fact, some are well warranted: the sparse prose and the suffocatingly violent and dark tone are present in both. Despite those similarities, it diverges enough in a way that tells a fantastic, twisted story that feels original. The only downfall when compared to McCarthy is the lack of beautiful lines. The Devil All the Time is a plainly written novel with simple descriptions and the occasional simile)
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