DNF. Boring. Weird. ( )

I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest, but came out delightfully surprised and pleasantly disturbed. The Devil All the Time is the sort of book that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. One that, once gone, strangely makes you wonder if that taste was so bad after all while sparking a perverse craving for more.

Pollock fleshed out this tale with all the familiar tropes of Southern Gothic and weaved it seamlessly with the dank feeling of noir hopelessness. Instead of endless rain and neon lights in a city that never sleeps, Pollock gave us sweatboxes and crummy diners and backwater communities where solitude is often the best option. Instead of hardboiled, grisly detectives and reluctant heroes, he gave us a complex web of murderers, whores and irredeemable priests, all spreading their own wicked sickness across the people they touch.

That’s where The Devil All the Time’s best attempt at a sympathetic character comes into it. Arvin Eugene Russell isn’t as shockingly repugnant as the rest of the leading cast, but he’s no saintly hero, either. The presence of the other leads creates a vortex of chaos and questionable decisions around a young man who would have otherwise lived a troubled but unremarkable life.

While it hardly keeps you guessing, and I did find the convergence of the four character threads to be entirely predictable, it’s the brutal shock factor of the small moments that really pulls you in as a reader. The story becomes about the flashes of memories that shaped these deplorable, sin-ridden characters and the journey that brings them to their calamitous end.

After all, despite the resolution, Pollock closes the novel in a way that leaves you questioning if such vicious cycles can really be so easily broken.

I started out reading the ebook, but due to life and the obsessive need to know how it ended, I switched to the audiobook. That was a great choice, as I found the narration performance really helped to drag me down into the sweat-stained, dank world that Pollock created.

One point that did grind on my nerves was the gratuitous use of ‘said’. Maybe it was because of the narration, or maybe (and most likely) it was just overused.

This, of course, falls more on the editor than the writer. But when a good 90% of any dialogue is just ‘said’, it quickly becomes redundant. Especially when the narrator did a fantastic job with character voices and tones, spitting words out and snarling curses, only to then have the text end with ‘Carl said’.

It’s small nit-picking, I know, but it was enough that one could play a drinking game with the repetitive word and end up pretty tanked by the end.

Still, after finishing (and loving) the book, I’m pretty apprehensive over the upcoming movie. It’s going to be a tough job to portray the level of depravity and really get into the gritty, repulsive hearts of a lot of the characters. Even with an R rating, how is a movie going to show the extent of Teagardin’s sexual distortions of sin and the bible, and the magnitude of what he’s done to his young wife? Will they faithfully show us what Sandy will do for $20, or the way Carl and her unhealthy addictions began? Will the production ‘Powers That Be’ allow the prayer log set to be the shockingly grotesque reflection of a troubled mind, as so vividly and well described in the book?

I guess only time will tell. Thankfully there’s not long to wait now. I am, however, looking forward to all the die-hard MCU and DCEU fans barrelling headfirst into this without knowing what to expect. I get the feeling the internet will be an interesting place for a few days after this release.

( )

This is rather disturbing book on multiple levels. I have a feeling that without rural US nobody would be able to write horror stories. It needs to be Appalachian "eyes from the forest" type of story because, hey, it is setting - right?

Story on its own is pretty good written, we follow several story-lines that (at first) slowly (then in ever faster pace) converge to rather satisfying conclusion. This is not horror in terms of supernatural but horror caused by human nature. Also book will goes into annals on my end as a book with most terrifyingly vivid depictions of cancer patients.

Book is rather free with some of the elements - incest, sex, sex, blood, blood - and while some of them are understandable (i.e. new preacher and homicidal couple) others are there just for shock and awe effect (i.e. I am still trying to figure out the role of the altar as anything besides scene setup for final showdown). Apparently nobody is doing anything in the farm country than incest, weird religious practices and in general nailing everything that moves (and here it seems they all aim for even younger girls and boys and sex slaves/selling spouses are very common - I think that farmers and miners would have a comment on this but lets leave it as it is). Unrelated to this specific novel, all of this them-incestual-hicks approach while interesting at first becomes very tiring after a while (enough maniacs live in urban areas, you do not need to go outside the cities). In any case this is the central view of rural society in this story; I think that small town horror can be depicted in other ways but OK, I guess sometimes cliche's are required for the shock value.

Author's style is excellent and you will be glued to the pages to the very end. Conversations between and behavior of the characters flow so naturally I could not find any major inconsistency (even events relevant to story progress are very very natural, there is no illogical developments, which one could expect considering story spans decades). Author is truly master when it comes to words and I think that more subtle approach (without shock and awe technique) would suit him more.

All in all very interesting crime noir novel where no-one is spared and you are left wondering what next. I wont go into details because I dont think it can be done without spoiling the novel and that would be true crime. Lets say book "suffers" from what I call "6th sense syndrome" - you will need to have very large time period before re-reading because everything will be very alive in your memory when you read it first time.

Highly recommended and I have to admit I am on a lookout for more works from this author. ( )

I thought the movie was dark, but this took it to a new level. A rough read no doing, but so very well done and engaging. Recommend for anyone up for it. ( )

This was a great read. It didn't have the ending that I expected and I think that made it better. ( )

Very disturbing and sick, but that can be a good thing. Really enjoyed it. ( )

I was pretty surprised this was called a Horror novel. It more fits the Gruesome Crime Thriller or Southern Gothic category. Other the mislabeling of the Genre, I must admit I was quickly drawn into the story. At first it seemed like a bunch of well written short stories, until the final few chapters, it finally ties it all together wonderfully and everything comes full circle. The story puts you on an emotional roller-coaster, from the murder of Lenora’s mother to the suicide of Arvin’s father. The desires of small town people, the limits we will go to get revenge for those we love. All in all, this was an amazing novel and my favorite thus far this year. ( )

On the way home from being discharged from the army, after V Day world war II, Willard Russell leaves the bus when the driver stops for a break in Meade, Ohio, and crosses the street to a little restaurant called The Wooden Spoon. There he meets the waitress, who he immediately falls in love with, and knows she will marry her. But this is a really gross scene:
"... In a room by the window, he sat down and lit a cigarette. A shelf ran around the room, lined with old bottles and antique kitchenware and cracked black and white photographs for the dust to collect on. Tacked to the wall by the booth was a faded newspaper account of a Meade police officer who'd been gunned down by a bank robber in front of the bus depot. Willard looked closer, saw that it was dated February 11th, 1936. That would have been 4 days before his 12th birthday, he calculated. An old man, the only other customer in the diner, was bent over at a table in the middle of the room slurping a bowl of green soup. His false teeth rested on top of a stick of butter in front of him."
( )

Fiction, Read, R2021, 2010s ( )

Donald Ray Pollock, you and your Arvin Russel knocked me stiff. This is like a darker, funnier Coen Bros film. It's sick on so many levels. Sick with little black sores oozing out a thick, literary juice. I drank it all up.

I love Pollock's style: He writes characters by getting into their heads--even the psychopaths, revealing to us all their sick little thoughts as they diddle about their lives, trying to get by in hicksville, Ohio/West VA. He sets up situations that got me all riled up and built up tension that felt exploitative and profound at the same time. I loved how real all the characters seemed. They were so removed from my life, but I still sympathized with them, or at least understood them as human beings.

The Devil All the Time is just dripping with an overpowering cynicism. These characters live in a world where no one really cares about them, every man for himself – except God is there for them all. God is there for these people. Laughing my ass off. I laughed so many times. It’s kind of horrific, the kinds of things I laughed at, and that made this book such a revelation to me – it ridiculed death and poverty and ignorance so skillfully, but it still kept a strong moral backbone, if that makes sense. It was hilariously nihilistic, but also realistic to the point of horror.

I had tiny qualms. I didn’t like the Roy/Theodore storyline as much as the others. And looking back, the book’s title feels too trivial, unimposingly unrelated to the plot– though in a way, I feel like that’s exactly fitting for this book. The small, irrelevant details about these characters’ lives sneak up on you and keep you fabulously entertained all the way to the last part, when all the loose ends come crashing into each other, and you realize you’ve been chuckling with the Devil the entire time.

( )

Meh. Sorta good if you like this kind of stuff. ( )

Can. Not. Wait. to see Robert Pattinson as one of the sick and twisted characters in the movie version of this dark and disturbing book.

Read it and then watch it. Coming to Netflix September 16th, 2020. ( )

Not what I hoped for. ( )

Um, I saw the trailer for this book and it looks absolutely AMAZING and up my alley - this was TOO much animal stuff, too much religion ... felt very Stephen King rambly to me - not that it's a bad thing - it just really wasn't for me in the end, but I still intend to watch the movie because it does honestly look spectacular lol ( )

This is a review solely on the book, not the movie. This is a rant review from my blog, so bear with me. Warning: Not only is this a full spoiler review, but I will be discussing the difficult topics the book covers, some of which could be triggering.


I finished The Devil All the Time two days ago, just in time for the film's release. While I am excited to watch the movie, especially with all the big names attached, I’m more interested to see if the movie can rectify some of the major issues I had with the novel. So welcome to my first rant review!


I am not from the American South, which I’m pretty sure affected the way I interacted with the characters and landscape. I’ve never been to Ohio or West Virginia, and I can’t say that the novel gave me a great view or idea of what the states are like. Then again, maybe it’s because I’m not a white dude.


I haven’t read many books in my life that disgust me. Typically, I can read bloody books full of gore, and read novels that explore the minds of terrible people, without too much issue. I’ve always felt that literature is a chance to explore difficult subjects and look at how these issues pertain to our current world, or are possible in the future. That being said, I think that the way The Devil All the Time dealt with such subjects, with such a pessimistic view, made it difficult to read.


I think what truly made me uncomfortable reading The Devil All the Time was the author’s casual use of violence against women, homophobic and stereotypical treatment of the LGBT community, racist slurs, troubling portray of the disabled community, and pedophilia.


The Devil All the Time follows a large cast of characters over the course of two decades. The novel begins with Willard, a troubled young man arriving home after the end of the second world war. He eventually settles down, marrying a young woman named Charlotte and having a son, Arvin. When Charlotte contracts cancer, Willard slaughters animals, and eventually a man, as sacrifices. Charlotte dies and Willard commits suicide the same day. Arvin, now around 10, is sent to live with his grandmother, Emma. Arvin isn’t the only orphan Emma has taken in. Lenora has been living with Emma since she was a baby, when her travelling preacher/drifter father, Roy, and his cousin, Theodore, killed her mother (though she doesn’t know this.)


Eight years later, Arvin is still recovering from everything he lived through in his childhood. Lenora is bullied for her plainness and dedication to God. A new preacher comes to town, a pedophile, and begins to abuse young girls, including Lenora. Lenora commits suicide (accidentally, known to no one but the reader,) after she gets pregnant. Arvin figures out what happened, and follows in his father’s murderous footsteps by killing the corrupt preacher.


After leaving Emma and heading back to his hometown, he is picked up by Sandy and Carl. Sandy helps her husband to seduce hitchhikers, exclusively young men, then kill them. The two previously killed Roy as he was on his way back to see Lenora after the death of Theodore. Arvin catches on to what they want to do and kills them. When he arrives back to his hometown, he is hunted down by Lee Bodecker, Sandy’s older brother. Arvin kills Brodecker in the same circle his father killed himself. At the end of the novel, Arvin is one of the few still living characters.


If you find this summary confusing to follow, that’s because A LOT happens in the book. I’ll give Pollock credit for the intricacies of how all the characters interact, but the large cast had me flipping back pages to see which characters were which.


Now, time to talk about the women of The Devil all the Time. All of them were heartbreaking to read and made it difficult for me to finish the book. None of them felt like real women, and few had more than the occasional couple lines. Their worth is attributed to their appearance. Take how Arvin talks about his half-sister, whom he has lived with now for more than half a decade:


Though just a few months younger than Arvin, she already seemed dried up, a pale winter spud left too long in the furrow. [...] “She ain’t never gonna make cheerleader, that’s for sure,” he [Arvin] told Uncle Earskell. (p. 111, ebook)


When I was thinking back over the ways the women died in this novel, I realized most of them die in a way that is often referred to as ‘fridging.’ The phrase is used to describe women who die to propel the character arcs of the main, male characters.


Perhaps worst of all, most of the women endure incredibly horrible, repeated acts of grooming and sexual assault. The case that made me want to throw my e-reader at the wall was that of Lenora. The young teenager is targeted by the new preacher because her looks and bullying make her “easy.” He grooms her over the course of several months, and continually rapes her. Lenora’s point of view and her trauma is barely explored, instead replaced by the pastor talking about how she is filling out and is more beautiful than before. After she gets pregnant and is gas-lighted by the pastor, Lenora dies. The entire situation felt like it was described and dealt with in the worst way possible. Lenora’s sexual assault is used to propel Arvin’s character arcs and that of the preacher, whereas Lenora has a very small arc and we learn little about her. Using violence against women for this purpose is disgusting, there’s no other way to put it,


I’m not going to get into detail as much with the other issues, because I think they pretty much speak for themselves. The n-word is said by two (minor) characters to show how racist they are, while the one (also minor) black character ends up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. The two ‘gay’ characters. (it’s not official but HEAVILY implied,) further perpetuate harmful stereotypes against the LGBT community. One is a pedophile: “Theodore swore that the boy asked for help in zipping his pants up, but not even Roy could buy that one.” (p. 137, ebook). The other, Carl, kills young men after he takes their picture.


The prose that describes all of these events is stark and in the third person. Even though I had a view inside of the character’s head, I never felt like I understood them or their emotions. All felt very surface level, and in-your- face evil. The setting is also not obvious or clear to someone like me who has never visited the area. I found it uninspiring to read and at times unclear as to how a scene was being played out. The novel does deliver its promise of evil and pessimism, with despicable characters and a bleak setting, but I don’t think any of it had the effect Pollock likely anticipated. I left The Devil All the Time feeling empty. I didn’t feel like I better understood the Southern Gothic, nor did I feel like I had watched characters delve into darkness in an eerily real-to-life way. Honestly, I regretted reading this book.


The only reason I finished this book was because I wanted to watch the movie. One of the things that worries me is that there are going to be young girls who watch the movie and idolize the very bad characters just because they’re played by their ‘favs’ and ‘idols’. I was excited to watch the movie and read the book after I first watched the trailer, but I am far from saying the same thing now.


Rating 2/10: I didn’t have a good time reading this novel for many reasons that you now know. I highly DON’T recommend The Devil All the Time. ( )

This book is so good. The characters are written so well, but they're all sad, dysfunctional, or just really bad people. More accurately: they're a combination of those three things. Among them, there is a husband-wife duo that ride around collecting hitchhiking men to photograph, a corrupt law enforcement officer, and a collection of really nasty preachers. My favorite character is Arvin Russell, a young man who is orphaned early and sent away to live with relatives. Arvin has a traumatic coming-of-age, with a dying mother and a father that creates a place to "pray" for her in the woods. It's so dark and twisted and depraved.

This group of people is just, wow. It isn't their individual stories that make this novel so excellent; it's the way the author weaves their lives together. Their paths cross in ways that make the entire story exceptional, far better than the sum of its parts. You sort of have to wait for the big payoff, to see how everything will ultimately come together. But it's so worth it.

I cannnot wait to see the Netflix adaptation of this book in a couple of weeks. I have it on my calendar, actually.

Audiobook Notes: I saw that the audiobook is narrated by Mark Bramhall, one of my favorite narrators, so I listened to the entire thing. My gosh, Bramhall's narration is excellent. He does some of the best accents out there, and he made these characters come alive alongside (and inside of) their rough, poor, Appalachian environment. I fully recommend audiobook as the preferred format for reading this story. It is exceptional.

Title: The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Narrator: Mark Bramhall
Length: 9 hours, 10 minutes, Unabridged
Publisher: Random House Audio ( )

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This is dark. Very dark. Like, unremittingly dark. Like, the author has to literally compare it to the constant presence of Satan in your life in the actual title dark. But it's also very enjoyable.

And that's because there's a thick seem of pitch-black satire running right through the story. The endless string of violence, abuse and perversion is presented as the product of small-town inadequacies in the middle of America in the middle of the twentieth century. And in small towns, there is a lot of inadequacy.

At times, the colliding violent stories reminded me of the films of Quentin Tarantino – and that'll be because they both draw on a mixture of American history, myth and hardboiled crime fiction. Fans of True Detective or Stephen King will also enjoy its flirtations with folk horror; violence is closely linked to religion or the sublime throughout, reminding you of just what a gory religion Christianity can be in the Bible Belt. (I read Children of the Corn partway through this and was struck by the parallels.)

I don't think you could believe in Heaven and write a book like this. I don't, and I bloody loved it. ( )

This is not a novel that I would recommend to everyone. That is not because this is a bad novel, for it is indeed a very good one; rather I hesitate in my recommendation because there are no truly good characters in this book, in fact the are several very bad ones. The best you can say about the central protagonist, Arvin Russell, is that his violent tendencies are reserved for some of the worst of the lot.

So what is there to recommend about this novel? The author has captured realistically a slice of America's underside and portrayed it very well with strong characterizations and a believable, if not somewhat improbable and very violent, plot.

Set in Ohio and West Virginia in the years following World War II, it tells the stories of various desperate characters, including a veteran suffering from PTSD, a pair of husband-and-wife serial killers, and both a preacher and sheriff who are corrupt.

The protagonist, Arvin, is presented in a prologue as a young boy. He sits in a clearing with his father, Willard, on an oak log, joining him in his evening prayer routine. Willard is borderline obsessive when it comes to prayer and expects the same from his son. While Arvin prays, however, his mind wanders and feelings of isolation bubble to the surface. He feels like an outsider at school, he is the victim of relentless bullying. Arvin recalls his father telling him to stand up for himself, but this is easier said than done.

Willard recalls the horrifying things he saw and did during the war. One memory haunts him in particular: that of a soldier he comes across who has been skinned and crucified. Willard shoots the man as an act of mercy, putting an end to his suffering. Upon his return home he had married a young woman named Charlotte Willoughby and together they have a son whom they name Arvin. As the years pass, Willard becomes obsessed with prayer. The obsession only deepens when Charlotte contracts cancer. Willard’s rituals become progressively more bizarre and upsetting, culminating in animal and even human sacrifice. Willard believes these acts of devotion are necessary to save his wife. Nevertheless, in the end, Charlotte still dies, prompting Willard to commit suicide. Traumatized by his parents’ deaths and his father’s behavior, Arvin moves in with his grandmother, Emma. There, he meets Lenora, an orphan girl whom Emma takes in after her mother, Helen, is killed, most likely by a traveling preacher named Roy who is also Lenora’s father.

The narrator moves on to tell of Carl and Sandy Henderson, a pair of murderous lowlifes who entertain themselves by picking up male hitchhikers and killing them. Their reign of terror is allowed to persist in part because Sandy’s brother, Sheriff Bodecker, is corrupt and incompetent. An unemployed photographer, Carl takes pictures of his victims, calling them models.
In the meantime Arvin and Lenora grow up and become very close. When Lenora is bullied at school, Arvin comes to her defense, fighting the bullies, but also demonstrating a violent side that will follow him throughout his life. In addition to further exploits of Carl and Sandy's we are told more about Roy, the traveling preacher who killed Lenora’s mother. Roy lives with his physically disabled cousin, Theodore. After moving on from the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified, Roy is replaced by a new preacher, Pastor Teagardin, who lives with his much younger wife, Cynthia. Lenora believes Teagardin to be an exceptionally holy man, but Arvin has his doubts. These suspicions are validated when the reader learns of Teagardin’s seduction and sexual corruption of Cynthia. Teagardin then successfully seduces Lenora, getting the young girl pregnant. Furious, Arvin shoots Teagardin dead and flees Coal Creek.

These dreary yet interesting plot lines come together in the last part of the book. While there is no hero magically appearing on a white horse each of the characters reach an end that is fitting, considering the lives they have lived. Throughout the novel the author builds the suspense so that you are propelled forward in spite of the violence. That aspect, the realism of the story, and the insight into the demented psychology of each of the characters made this a very good novel which I would recommend, especially to fans of Cormac McCarthy or Flannery O'Connor. ( )

Old time religion
ill-intentioned, soaked in blood
try praying harder. ( )

Fundamentally formulaic.

You know the genre: the dirt-poor and occasionally working white trash, muck, dirty forgettable sex, unattractive characters (like "The Ass Saw the angel", many Cormac McCarthy books) .

So another publisher says "yo, you write me one of those, boy" and Mr Pollock does what he's told. The 'landscape' is rich, but that it's just going-through-the-motions is obvious. No likeable characters and only two developed properly, 'cos it's all just for throw-away, lots of murder and sex....

The real problem is that there's no genius. No Genius.... so it gets tiring, and never really interesting. ( )

Seamless storytelling even if the story is not for all tastes. ( )

A handful of interrelated but uniquely disturbing plotlines wander and fester in and around the backroads and farms of Ohio and West Virginia before falling on one another and cancelling each other out gruesomely. ( )

This book is well written but very violent. Female characters are protrayed as good for one thing. ( )

This is one dark book. I love that about it. In fact, it was much darker than I expected and that is not a bad thing. It lived up to what I expect when someone describes a Southern Gothic novel.

The characters are very dark and very violent. There is a returned World War II vet who falls for a beautiful waitress and settles in Knockemstiff, Ohio. He is kind of a crazy wilderness lay preacher who attempts to pray away his wife’s cancer. Fair warning to sensitive readers, some of his worship involves animal sacrifice that is quite graphic.

There are two crazy travelling preachers who are every stereotype of “Deliverance” characters that you can think of – including the squeal little piggy variety. Those that have read the book or seen the movie will understand.

My favorite creepy couple was Carl and Sandy. Every year they take a two to four week sojourn to different parts of the country and embark on a serial killing spree. It involves sex, photography and death.

What is most interesting is that at different points in the book, all of these disparate stories converge. There were times that I was wondering where this was all headed and then the characters would meet. It made sense when it happened but one thing I loved about that was the author never felt the need to speed the story towards these meetings.

In that sense, the story unfolds at a nice, slow, southern pace. And if I am picturing this story as a color it would be very black with shades of gray and some white. Apparently there is another book called “Knockemstiff” by the same author. I assume that it continues or precedes this one and that it is populated by some of the same characters.

I definitely felt like there was more to say in the story. Even the peripheral characters had very fascinating glimpses that made me want to know more. This was a great bargain and I would not hesitate to recommend this book to other readers. ( )

I'd recently read a review of Donald Ray Pollock's most recent novel that sounded interesting, but it wasn't available in our local library. I decided to go father back into his catalog and found 'The Devil All the Time', his first full-length novel. I can't imagine a more auspicious, audacious, and disturbing beginning for a 'new' author.

'The Devil....' is going to be one of those books that won't be soon forgotten. It's set in the period following WWII up into the 60's in the hilly region of Ohio and West Virginia and 'stars' an intermingled mix of characters that include crooked police, serial killers, good religious folk, bad religious folk, poor people, hillbillies..... you get the picture. And lots of violence, believe me.

The various subplots are threaded together expertly and tied up neatly (well, as neatly as possible based on what occurs at the end, anyway) at the conclusion. I won't go into details on the main plot(s), but suffice to say that it's not a 'traditional' whodunnit, mystery, or thriller, but is more of a slice of life over a number of years of a group of violent, hard luck people from a rough part of the country in an era of change for the country.

What's most impressive to me is the writing. The tone, flow, pace, and dialogue are strongly evocative of that period and place. There's nothing fancy in the prose, just very straightforward writing that seems to effortlessly fit the action. Some of the content is violent, some is downright gross, but none of it seems gratuitous.

I've heard Mr. Pollock's writing compared to a number of famous writers, O'Connor, Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy among them. I've not read O'Connor or Faulkner for years but am very familiar with McCarthy and I'd have to say that I can see some similarity there.

Pollack's initial novel is a great one, but it's not for the squeemish. If you can take the violence and nastiness you'll be rewarded, but be advised that you may be in for a few nightmares. ( )