We Review | The Death of Sweet Mister
Reviewed by: Marianne Moro
Novel by Daniel Woodrell
Plume (Penguin/Putnam)
$13.00 Paperback


Set in the Ozarks, amidst a rural netherworld of cyclical poverty and matter of fact despair, The Death of Sweet Mister is the latest book by Daniel Woodrell, the acclaimed author of Tomato Red. The Death of Sweet Mister is the story of 13 year old Shuggie Akins, an overweight child who is trapped in a ping pong game between his flirtatious mother Glenda and her cruel convict boyfriend Red. Red is a hardened thug who meanders in and out of their lives; his abrupt visits guarantee humiliation for Shug and trouble for Glenda. Shug and Glenda take a distant fourth place to Red's thieving, philandering and dimwit sidekick Basil.

Woodrell paints a world as revolting and foreign to most of us as any droid society in a science fiction book.  Shuggie lives in a world populated by adults who use and unwittingly disorient him. Red orders the boy to break into homes and steal drugs from cancer patients. Glenda's obvious love for the boy is often usurped by her drunken, seductive teasing. Shug's dry narration is at once heartbreaking and crassly realistic, and Red's bottom of the barrel friends are so vividly drawn they make the hicks in last week's episode of Cops seem like socialites.. The "boneyard" (or cemetery) that Shug tends and the ramshackle house he shares with his mother are the epicenter of his universe. Friendless except for Glenda, he forms an almost telepathic bond with her as they struggle for freedom from Red's tyranny. Their monotonous existence is forever changed by the appearance of Jimmy Vin Pearce, a sweet-talking, well-dressed slickster in a green T-Bird. Glenda is instantly smitten, and their ensuing affair brings the story to an ugly but inevitable conclusion.

Daniel Woodrell's shotgun quick prose accomplishes in barely 200 pages, what other writers strive for in books two or three times as long. The emotional wallop never subsides, packing a punch in the gut realism that some may find unsettling.