The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Donald Ray Pollock’s “The Heavenly Table” was published in 2016 by Doubleday. The novel is a dark vision of American gothic; a time of dirt-poor farmers cast adrift in the rural south. While this is indeed a dark story, it is not totally so. “The Heavenly Table” caused me to laugh out loud more than once, and then to be almost appalled at what I was laughing at. Grim and violent, gritty and funny by turns, the novel charts the course of a collision between two families.
Pearl Jewett is the patriarch of the Jewett clan. This man is well up in the running for worst father in a modern novel. Jewett and his three sons make up the entire family. There is no maternal influence, not anymore. Mrs. Jewett departed the world in a fairly horrible way. Given the circumstances, she was more than likely happy to go. Fortune rains bad luck on the Jewett boys. A crime of opportunity and misunderstanding pushes the Jewett brothers onto a violent and erratic journey.
North of the Jewetts, a simple farmer is being swindled out of his meager family fortune. Ellsworth Fiddler is no genius, as his wife Eula would be happy to confirm. With all of their money gone, they may lose the family farm. Ellsworth’s search for their errant son causes his life to cross the path of now bloody Jewett Brothers.
The collision of the two families takes place in a small American town. The little burg is populated with a collection ordinary people, odd-balls, and at least one monster. Like any good showdown in a small American town, there is death, redemption, and surprise.
I recommend this novel to readers who are fans of American Gothic, or Cormac McCarthy, or Patrick DeWitt. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark, funny, engaging work.
And, in a quick pause for the cause…
