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The Long Home
William Gay. MacMurray & Beck: 2000 (paperback). ISBN: 1878448056. 257 pages.
Guide not available
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Oh yeah. The big bad Southern novel rears its gritty head once again, and it's
about time. Much as we have enjoyed the recent flood of comfy, wacky, zesty novels from and about the American South, it's
a pleasure to discover an author who deserves to walk in the footprints of Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and above all,
William Faulkner. Set in rural Tennessee in the 1940s, Gay's novel is populated by a cast of archetypal characters-the bold
young man, the beautiful young girl, the wise old man and the omniscient villain with a heart as black as night. But these
characters are more than stock types; in each we recognize the stubborn elements of individual humanity that insist on
pushing through to the surface. In the villain, especially, Gay has managed to create the kind of ominous presence that
lurks on the edge of nightmare, waiting to take advantage of a person's most private weaknesses. Even the physical landscape
conspires to enhance the novel's sense of a hidden evil lurking within the dark and leafy forest. Brrrrrrrr. What we've got
here friends, is a great old-fashioned, highly intelligent, very readable story.
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