THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is a novel that almost passed me by. I had previously read Donald Ray Pollock's previous short story collection KNOCKEMSTIFF, which I liked by didn't love. I was in New York with Josie, her mother and her mother's best friend when we walked by iconic bookstore The Strand, and I didn't want to go in. I had several reasons that I thought were good : I had went the previous year and it cost me $100 that I didn't have, it was late and about to close and I didn't want to invest the time, etc.
I bought 4 books that evening, including THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME, for a mere 6 bucks. If I hadn't went in that night, I would've missed out on a timeless, transcendent novel about the downfall of religious faith in America. In Arvin Russell, Pollock created a superb protagonist, molded by the sickness and the beliefs of his father and drew an old world falling down and a new world building up around him. Arvin embodies the transition, its very reasons and the values this new America was built on.
THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is a novel about building a new world out of ideological ashes and rubble. It's both sprawling and very intimate, and it's the novel that stood above all others in 2014. If you like dark, morally grey and cerebral novels, do yourself a favour and read this bad boy.
