Give Us a Kiss by Daniel Woodrell

From the Publisher

Doyle Redmond is on the drift from a failed marriage and a floundering life, moving in an easterly direction in the Volvo he stole from his soon-to-be-ex-wife, heading for home: the red and rocky soil of the Ozarks where Redmonds have been farming and fighting since just after the Civil War. More than likely it was a mistake to stop off en route for a visit with his folks in Kansas City. It was hard to refuse when they asked him to ferret out his big brother back home in West Table, Mo., and charm (or strong-arm) him into giving himself up to the K. C. law. And in the tradition of no good deed goes unpunished, Doyle's filial favor bites back. He isn't in West Table long before he finds himself in a lot more trouble than car theft, having committed manslaughter or murder on one of the Dolly clan. Dollys and Redmonds have been blood feuding for as long as memory serves, and no one in West Table was going to believe it was an accident. Least of all the Dollys. Acidly funny and so original in its wordcraft that its prose seems to sing, Give Us a Kiss gives dimension and life to a world usually glimpsed only in comic strips and bad sitcoms. It is a world as rooted in its past as in its soil, a world that cares more for bloodlines and family than for the American dream, which it shapes to fit itself, obeying codes that fly in the face of established norms. Only a writer of Dan Woodrell's talents could strip the caricature from these lives and give us the reality of their world. It is the world Doyle Redmond ran from. The world he now finds is all he has - or ever really had. Returning to his past in search of his future, Doyle is negotiating for his manhood, for his very soul. Some might wonder at the bargain he finally strikes, but none can question the power of the book's conclusion.

Publishers Weekly

Again, Woodrell mines his native Ozarks for artistic and comic inspiration, but this time the lode that produced the dazzling The Ones You Do (1992) turns up as much paste as as it does precious stones. The lure of marijuana as a cash crop provides the premise for the author's fifth novel, a lighthearted tale about a pair of literary brothers who wind up settling an old family score when a drug deal goes awry. As the story opens, narrator Doyle Redmond, a crime novelist, is returning to the Ozarks from California in a Volvo he stole from his wife after she slept with a prominent poet. Back home, Doyle hunkers down with his brother, Smoke, a fellow author whose attention has turned to cultivating a large marijuana crop for a big profit. While helping Smoke harvest the illegal bounty, Doyle engages in an impromptu romance with the daughter of Smoke's girlfriend, a teenage beauty named Niagra Mattux, who has a yen for the silver screen. This brief idyll gives way to violent reality when the dope deal finally goes down and the Redmond brothers are ambushed by a family of local degenerates called the Dollys. Woodrell's extraordinarily deft prose makes for a luscious read, and his unique combination of existential redneck humor and sharp literary barbs proves entertaining. But there's little substance behind the nonstop jokes, a problem that grows more aggravating as the plot winds down into a series of stock action scenes followed by a predictable resolution. (Feb.)

Library Journal

A semidark comic novel set in the Missouri Ozarks, this is the amusing tale of tough-guy midlist novelist Doyle Redmond's transformation into the writer he only dreamed of being. Escaping from trendy California in his estranged wife's Volvo, Doyle reconnects with his roughneck heritage: gun-crazy grandpa and older brother, big-breasted gals, marijuana farms, and a 50-year-old blood feud with the infamous Dolly clan. Reader interest is held throughout by Doyle's absurd descent into his dream self. With this fast-paced yarn's final page, Doyle, now a murderer en route to prison, takes mock glory in his newly earned media renown and the knowledge that his out-of-print crime novels will now be reprinted. All told, this is a good-natured, good-hearted tale. By the author of the critically praised novel The Ones You Do (LJ 3/15/92), this present effort is highly recommended for larger fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/95]-James B. Hemesath, Adams State Coll. Lib., Alamosa, Col.

Robert Houston

"Slick, sparkling, stylized....Takes on a mythic quality." -- The New York Times Book Review

Les Roberts

"Onw of the best-written suspense novels of the decade...Joyously vulgar and as raw as three-day-old corn whiskey." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

Bill Brashler

"Give us a kiss fairly burns in your hand....Makes you whistle because it is so good." -- Chicago Tribune

Alan Woog

"A sly gem of a book...A darkly funny, lusciously written joyride into the heart of hillbilly weirdness." -- Seattle Times

A. Scott Cardwell

Scotch-chugging, squirrel-skinning Smoke Redmond is hiding out from the law in the middle of the Ozarks. His brother Doyle -- a novelist, car thief, and our narrator -- is sent from Kansas City by his parents to talk Smoke into copping a plea. But Smoke's having none of that; "I got plans that require my presence on this side of the jail house bars," he drawls. "So I reckon that wraps that up." The two brothers hole up in the hills with Smoke's girlfriend, Big Annie, and her hillbillyette daughter Niagra -- whose "red cowgirl boots went up her bare legs like flame licks from hell" -- where they eat mescaline, play cow pattie golf, and bide time until their plan pays off. But the Dollys, a resident rival clan and meanest snakes in the county, have other ideas.

And so does Daniel Woodrell. With Give Us a Kiss, his fifth novel, the Ozark-born and -bred author has written a fast-talking white trash libretto about the eternal two-step between genes and karma. Doyle, frustrated by life and love, looks for answers in his past lives and his ancestor's portraits, and he's assured by both that the chip on his shoulder isn't going anywhere. "I carry a bunch of anger around," he says. "Who I carry it for rotates." Woodrell uses these elements to create a darkly comic crime dance where the mystical and the murderous make out in the corner: "I was born for this," Doyle says. "Again, I mean." The result of all these genre shenanigans is charmingly (and terrifyingly) good, dirty fun. --Salon

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