The Gospel Singer
Harry Crews, Kevin Wilson
£12.99
Mr B's review
The literal dead-end town of Enigma, Georgia feverishly awaits the return of its prodigal son. The Gospel Singer, once raised in Enigma’s swampy backroads, is now celebrated across the country for his voice and perceived powers of healing and redemption. And in his hometown everyone wants a piece of him – a murderer seeks his protection, his siblings hope to escape on his coat-tails, the grieving mother of his former sweetheart Mary Bell wants him to sing over her corpse and Foot, the leader of a tented travelling curiosity show and owner of one 27 inch foot, just wants a share of his audience. But only The Gospel Singer himself, and his dysfunctional manager Didymus, realise that his real skill is sinning, not singing, and that this homecoming is destined for hysterical chaos.
Unpredictable, out of control, often hilarious despite everything, this was Crews’ debut and it set the scene for a career spent sharpening the leading edge of Southern grit. – Nic
Description
The poor town of Enigma, Georgia awaits the return of its most famous son – the Gospel Singer. With the voice of an angel and, it is said, the touch of a healer, he is fresh from the cover of LIFE and the cheers of the Carnegie Hall crowd. And yet, for all his fame, something drives him back to his obscure past, to small-town idolization and half-forgotten deeds. There, before the crowds that have gathered at his feet, he will reveal the cruelty at the heart of his act …
The Gospel Singer, Harry Crews’ extraordinary debut novel, is at once a surreal investigation into the nature of the American South, as well as an intricate mediation on faith and its place in the community.
Publisher Review
“Flannery O’Connor on steroids.”
-John Williams, GQ
“I don’t know where [Harry Crews’s] narrative magic comes from, but it is firmly there.”
-Joseph Heller
“…a bona fide Southern writer in the vein of Flannery O’Connor, whose unvarnished language and absurdist take on life among the lower rungs of the region’s social ladder [is] shot through with a rough-and-tumble kind of empathy….it was with great pleasure that I spent last weekend reading The Gospel Singer,… a darkly funny tragedy…. The world he writes about is violent and ruthless….But there’s a point to Crews’ madness, and always present is a throughline of empathy…”
-Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Critics and awards anoint some authors as legends. Others depend on word-of-mouth and prose that stands the test of time….There is nothing folksy, never mind pastoral or genteel, about Crews. With caustic and fabulist writing, he exhumed the ghosts of America’s original sin…..Crews captured the raw essence of humanity in both fiction and nonfiction. Side by side, these reissues form the complete picture of an imperfect man who charged hard into extremes to escape his cultural inheritance.”
-Lauren Leblanc, Los Angeles Times
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