Whiskey

January 1, 2018
Three generations of a Native American family struggle with hard lives, bad choices, and alcohol in this impressive novel.In the summer of 1991 in the state of Washington, two brothers sit in their local tavern at a critical time. Andre is heading toward his second divorce from Claire, and Smoker (born Wendell but nicknamed for his boyhood habit of torching candy cigarettes) is hunting his wayward wife so he can retrieve his 10-year-old daughter, Raven. The siblings embark on an odyssey that weaves through the book in scattered sections. They capture a bear they keep in their camper for possible trade value and get involved in a variety of violence by fist and gun. As one character opines: "You boys ain't run-of-the-mill crazy." Other sections look back to the boys' youth, to the troubled history of their parents, hard-drinking Pork and sexually adventurous Peg, and to Andre's efforts to avoid whiskey and hold on to Claire. The jigsaw structure can frustrate, but Holbert (The Hour of Lead, 2014, etc.) is a canny writer, and soon the finely drawn fragments from the past percolate into 1991's narrative and go far to explain why the brothers are rolling toward some reckoning. Like Cormac McCarthy, another bard of the modern West's brutality, Holbert finds beauty and cruelty in the land, in the tease and punch of eloquently elliptical dialogue, and in the way humans struggle for love, self-knowledge, and a grip on life that won't just burn their fingers. He writes terse prose whittled to essentials and grained with vernacular: "He smelled gamey as an elk and his breath made an awful racket." His characters may well brand a reader's memory.A gut-punch of a bleak family saga that satisfies on many levels.

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Starred review from January 29, 2018
Holbert (Lonesome Animals) returns with a violent, gruesome, and beautiful tale that, despite its despondency, is perversely winning. The story is set in a hard-luck Washington town near the Grand Coulee Dam. Part Native American, Andre is a beloved math teacher and “minor tavern legend” known for his fierceness in bar brawls. His mother is a woman capable of putting “a year’s living into a long weekend,” as can his father (when he’s not locked up). Andre’s younger brother, Smoker, is a perennially broke, charming ladies’ man. All are alcoholics, vulnerable and vicious, damaged and doing great damage to one another. The novel darts back and forth across three periods in the family’s history. In the “Genesis” sections, which begin in 1981, Andre and Smoker fend for themselves in a dysfunctional household, and “Lamentations” describes the courtship and marriage of Andre and a fellow teacher. In “Exodus,” Andre, his marriage breaking up, accompanies Smoker to retrieve the latter’s daughter from a preacher’s remote, cultish commune, picking up an impressive litany of injuries—and a bear—along the way. The violence in this rangy, brilliant narrative is often grotesque, but this excess is tempered by dry humor, wonderful dialogue, and dark wisdom.

March 15, 2018

Taking place in Electric City, WA, in the early 1990s, this hardscrabble tale centers on two brothers, Andre and Wendell (aka Smoker), from a distressed and dysfunctional family. The lives of their father, Pork, and mother, Peg, have been largely fueled by alcohol, and Andre and Smoker have followed their example. Andre, the intellectual of the family, is a high school math teacher who, while now mostly sober, has repeatedly battled alcoholism. Meanwhile, Smoker, who makes a living from odd jobs, rarely puts up a fight where a drink is involved. After a religious zealot kidnaps Smoker's daughter, the brothers set off toward his remote mountain camp in an attempt to rescue her. It's a calamitous, occasionally low-comic journey that involves a load of buckshot fired into Smoker's derriere and a circus bear they keep in the back of their camper. But ultimately it leads to a fateful, and potentially redemptive, outcome. VERDICT With sections that alternate between past and present and given names such as Genesis, Lamentations, and Exodus, this tough, lyrical tale from Holbert (Hour of Lead) delivers an Old Testament feel--a profound sense of sin, guilt, loss, and ancient archetypes playing out in the face of a darkly inevitable fate.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2018
Told along three biblically allusive timelines, Holbert's (The Hour of Lead, 2014) bleak yet emotionally authentic chronicle of the dysfunctional White clan explores myriad manifestations of suffering through the lenses of various family members. Exodus, circa 1991, finds brothers Andre and Smoker setting off into the mountains of Washington to rescue Smoker's young daughter from a preacher with questionable intentions. Their witty banter belies a history of sibling rivalry marked by betrayal. Andre and Claire's tender yet heartbreaking, years-earlier marriage is covered in the appropriately named Lamentations, in which mutual need and affection are poisoned by regret and blame. Finally, Genesis traces the 1950s courtship of the brothers' parents, Pork and Peg, two forces of nature whose confluence results in a perfect storm. Resplendent descriptions and quick-witted dialogue serve as necessary counterpoint to visceral depictions of violence. The titular libation is both the catalyst of the destruction wrought by each family member and the balm with which each seeks reprieval from pain. Escaping that pattern hurtles the brothers toward the concussive climax and possibly redemption.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)