16 United States – That old ace in the hole – Annie Proulx – October 2014 (Score 6.7) -Note - Out of sequence, my fault

The opening section of this book, with its description of the flatlands of Texas reminds me of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias with its line “Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away”.

It is episodic, with scenarios loosely linked by the use of a road journey to look for places where hog slaughtering facilities could be possible without the locals realising, too late, what it was. Bob Dollar is the hapless fall-guy who is given this thankless task.

If Bob was a likeable rogue we could have considered this story as being picaresque. Instead he is simply an average young man trying to work his way round a lot of strangely named Texans to persuade them to do something they clearly don’t want to do. Even his cover story of being a real estate scout doesn’t fool many of them.

I’m afraid that, before too long, I was reduced to speed reading, hoping to find something that would attract me. I did, after about twenty more pages and, although it was not much of an improvement, I decided to stick with it for the sake of the discussion at our book group.

I wondered if this book was a very early attempt at fiction, by a very young Annie Proulx, and whether it had been published in daily or weekly episodes in a newspaper or magazine. I did some research and discovered that it was, in fact, her sixth publication, after such excellent work as the short story “Brokeback mountain,” the collection “Close range” and “The shipping news”.

t’s a pity because I loved all of the above list.

There were some unusually descriptive phrases such as, after a horrendous storm with tornados, “The sky was shaved clean except for a stubble of pale clouds on the horizon”. There were some humourous ones like “A bronze polaroid light tinted the pasture as though a massive lens was clenched in the sun’s eye socket”.

On the whole, though, I can’t recommend “That old ace in the hole”, and can only score it at 4.5.