Country: USA
Genre: Southern Gothic/Country Noir
Pages: 193
Last winter, I watched Debra Granik's movie adaptation of Winter's Bone and it struck a chord so hard with me, I knew I had to read the book. I'm probably not the only person feeling that way, because since it's been out and nominated for every cinema award possible from the Spirits to the Oscars (Granik REALLY did a great job), Daniel Woodrell's name is on everybody's lips. He had been adapted by Ang Lee before and didn't get half the coverage. Who is he and why did such a beautiful and subtle story has been ignored for so long? I mean, Woodrell had his readers before Winter's Bone was made into film, but he was nowhere since the landmark writer he is considered to be now. And that is cool with me. Reading the novel, I can understand what the fuss is about. As brilliantly adapted as it was for screen, there's an intimacy to Woodrell's language that you cannot translate. I finished Winter's Bone and thought it was too short. I could have read a thousand pages of this.
After two viewings and one reading, I can say I got a good grasp on the story. Not that it's particularly complex, but it's deeper than it seems. Jessup Dolly disappeared, leaving his older daughter Ree* in charge of his mentally disturbed wife and his two boys Sonny and Harold. Nobody's really alarmed until Baskin, a local police agent shows up on the Dollys' porch and informs them that Jessup has his court date and he had put the house and the lot for guarantee. Ree needs to find him, so that her family doesn't lose this house, which is about the only thing they have. So Ree goes around and asks her father's friend where might he be. She first goes to her uncle Teardrop**, who gives her a fair warning. Some questions are better unanswered and she's
about to get into a shitload of problems for asking where is Jessup hanging out.
Reading Woodrell's novel, you get a better understanding of what the Missouri Ozarks are about. It's a place with its own laws and its own logic. It's a land where you live by the strength of your name. It doesn't matter who you are, if you wear the wrong name you can be written off in a heartbeat. Part of Winter's Bone beauty is Ree's gradual understanding of that reality. Her initial loneliness is gradually wrapped into an intangible, yet very present veil. There are people looking out for her, people that understand the inner working of the Ozarks better than she does. It's a crime novel yes, but it's a novel that understand the nature of crime very well and articulates itself around the characters first. Poverty, necessity and opportunity are the real themes of Winter's Bone. No gun is waved around without making you understand the weight of such action.
That said, since Debra Granik has really made a TER-RI-FIC job at adapting the novel, you will find that it's extremely similar. It's not bad per se, it's just...strange. You start reading a scene and it's written with such concise clarity that at mid-point you tell yourself "Oh, that's this scene" and you can figure out what's going to happen. The dialogue is almost the same word for word. Winter's Bone is a short, yet very dense story about the nature of crime in the Missouri Ozarks, but also about family. It's better to read it if you haven't seen the movie yet, but it's good anyway. I'm going to be on the lookout for some more Woodrell in the future. The man can write. His style is spare and lightly disembodied. It sounds sometimes like Hemingway, sometimes like good Palahniuk, but Daniel Woodrell's writing has it's own identity. He's a writer with some serious soul.
*Who, according to the description looks a LOT more like the girl on the cover than Jennifer Lawrence. But Lawrence did a great job at incarnating her anyway.
** Who again doesn't look like anything John Hawkes portrayed, he's a lot scarier. But who cares, since Hawkes embodied the spirit of Teardrop to a near perfection.
about to get into a shitload of problems for asking where is Jessup hanging out.
Reading Woodrell's novel, you get a better understanding of what the Missouri Ozarks are about. It's a place with its own laws and its own logic. It's a land where you live by the strength of your name. It doesn't matter who you are, if you wear the wrong name you can be written off in a heartbeat. Part of Winter's Bone beauty is Ree's gradual understanding of that reality. Her initial loneliness is gradually wrapped into an intangible, yet very present veil. There are people looking out for her, people that understand the inner working of the Ozarks better than she does. It's a crime novel yes, but it's a novel that understand the nature of crime very well and articulates itself around the characters first. Poverty, necessity and opportunity are the real themes of Winter's Bone. No gun is waved around without making you understand the weight of such action.
That said, since Debra Granik has really made a TER-RI-FIC job at adapting the novel, you will find that it's extremely similar. It's not bad per se, it's just...strange. You start reading a scene and it's written with such concise clarity that at mid-point you tell yourself "Oh, that's this scene" and you can figure out what's going to happen. The dialogue is almost the same word for word. Winter's Bone is a short, yet very dense story about the nature of crime in the Missouri Ozarks, but also about family. It's better to read it if you haven't seen the movie yet, but it's good anyway. I'm going to be on the lookout for some more Woodrell in the future. The man can write. His style is spare and lightly disembodied. It sounds sometimes like Hemingway, sometimes like good Palahniuk, but Daniel Woodrell's writing has it's own identity. He's a writer with some serious soul.
*Who, according to the description looks a LOT more like the girl on the cover than Jennifer Lawrence. But Lawrence did a great job at incarnating her anyway.
** Who again doesn't look like anything John Hawkes portrayed, he's a lot scarier. But who cares, since Hawkes embodied the spirit of Teardrop to a near perfection.