A Review of William Gay's novel The Long Home

When my friend Holly noted William Gay's recent passing (2/23/2012), I thought Gay's writing deserved a bit of my time. Upon her recommendation, I picked up this novel, instead of a collection of short stories for some reason, and found it slowly growing on me. It opens with a murder scene and a strange disposal of the body. The sole witness keeps his secret from the murderer before acting. Although the plot creeps and crawls to breathe life into its setting and cast of gritty characters, it follows a dramatic crescendo with a desirable denouement. Populated by bootleggers, high school drop outs, and self-sufficient men and women who scramble and claw to survive, Gay’s narrative pulsates with a realism of a bygone era. Clapboard shacks may be void of the conveniences of electricity and plumbing, but the itinerant Packard foreshadows the roads of the WPA and a rapidly modernizing future.

Of course, the novel is reminiscent of William Faulkner's and Cormac McCarthy's quiet prose and southern milieu with its morally grey areas. Gay delights in the minutiae of his characters’ world who, without the attention to the sun and seasons, would become victims of the dark and the cold. Where the novel really sings is in the language and its patience for life. Gay's prose is like a soft twilight blanket: it cloaks and insulates you in a world that gets gradually colder and darker. But you are ready for the dawn too when it comes.