Product Description

The year is 1952, and E. F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after twenty years of roaming to find the three sons he abandoned are grown and angry: Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is obsessed with hunting down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mother's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, can see beyond all the hatred and strife and through the love of Raven Lee, a beauty from another town, he finds the courage to reject his family's curse.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #255832 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
William Gay's second novel, Provinces of Night recreates the oppressive, evocative atmosphere of the American Deep South he first explored in his debut novel, The Long Home. With a backdrop of rural Tennessee in the 1950s, our teenage protagonist, Fleming Bloodworth finds himself alone in the family home after his father, Boyd, abandons him to hunt down and kill his wife's lover. At the same time, Fleming's grandfather, EF, decides to return to his family after 20 years of self-imposed exile. He returns to discover that his remaining two sons, Warren and Brady are in turn, an alcoholic womaniser and a Bible-quoting fantasist who enjoys putting curses on his enemies. Amid this climate of bitterness and recrimination, Fleming spends a long, hot summer becoming acquainted with the grandfather he has never known and learning about his life as an itinerant banjo player. Along the way, his wayward cousin, Albright introduces Fleming to the beautiful Raven Lee, the daughter of a prostitute from a nearby town. Despite her own perilous circumstances, Raven represents Fleming's only hope of escaping from the hopeless web of misguided blood ties and age-old animosity woven by his own family.

The title of this beautifully crafted novel is borrowed from Cormac McCarthy, and Gay's larger-than-life Southern characters and precise rendering of a sultry Tennessee summer owes much to the inspiration of McCarthy, as well as other legendary Southern writers such as William Faulkner and Carson McCullers. This is a self-consciously big novel in the Southern tradition that could so easily have buckled under the weight of its own ambition, but instead Gay pulls it off with ease, presenting us with a stream of unforgettable characters. While the central themes of love, loyalty and forgiveness are explored seriously and sensitively, the finely wrought prose is also sprinkled with moments of genuine humour as Gay proves that he's not afraid to gently mock his gang of Southern eccentrics. This is a wonderful novel that is a worthy successor to the tradition it so obviously admires.--Jane Morris

Review
'Gay's writing is earth-toned, pungent, deeply rooted in the remote corner of Tennessee... Provinces of Night shows an author with a powerful vision and plenteous veins of material.' Richard Bernstein, New York Times 'There's not a word wasted in this living, breathing narrative populated by strongly-drawn characters... a fresh, original lament for the traces of the old South. Gay's vivid prose and dramatic instinct create lasting images and human moments of genius. This is a far bigger book than many novels twice its size, and it deserves its place in a rich tradition.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

From the Publisher
U.S quotes for Provinces of Night.
"Since the publication of William Gay's first novel, The Long Home in 1999, the Tennessee writer has been compared to William Faulkner, Larry Brown and to Cormac McCarthy, whose literary vision most closely parallels his own. The dark comedy of Flannery O'Connor also comes to mind, most notably in Provinces of Night's hilarious subplot involving a Quixotic attempt to repay a debt of honor". Tennessean.

"The book is enchanting - Gay, a Tennessean, has perfect pitch with both dialect and dialogue. He's shown us the habit many Southerners have of making almost anything funny". Denver Post.

Customer Reviews

lyrical writing
I've lived in Tennessee for almost 30 years, in the urban setting
of Knoxville. I'm a caver, and the hunting for new caves takes
me to small towns and deeply rural areas in rugged terrain, where
one can be 40 miles from the nearest supermarket. You learn that
there are places to be avoided, where strangers are not welcome.
(You can also find such places in London, Glasgow, etc., as well
as in parts of the English countryside.) The law can be far away
and not impartial in some locations. Provinces of Night deals
with small-town Tennessee rather than the deeply rural and remote
parts. The central figure, Fleming Bloodworth, is not violence-
prone, but violence is often not far away. There is humor and
tenderness, as well as violence and death, but that's often how
life can be. Tennessee is not a slaughterhouse, but it's not
unusual to see "Three Dead in Cocke County Bar Fight" on the
evening news.

William Gay started writing at age 52. He seems to have been
strongly influenced by the novels of Cormac McCarthy, especially
those set in Tennessee (Suttree, The Orchard Keeper, Child of
God--all set in Knoxville and the surrounding counties). The
title comes from McCarthy's dark and brooding novel Child of God.
Gay's first novel, The Long Home, has a flavor similar to Child
of God, but Provinces of Night is closer to Suttree and The
Orchard Keeper. Gay's writing skills are on a par with McCarthy:
after reading Provinces of Night and The Long Home, I reread
McCarthy's novels, and took a long pause when I encountered the
phrase "provinces of night" in Child of God. I wondered in
McCarthy was writing under a pseudonym.

There's a great power and lyrical quality in Gay's writing. When
I got halfway through Provinces of Night I began to dread turning
the pages, since every page read brought me closer to the end.
So I ordered The Long Home from Amazon, taking comfort in the
knowledge that hundreds of more pages would be waiting for me.
Gay's third work, I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down, a
collection of short stories, has just been published, and it
contains some of the finest short stories I've ever read.
Gay is a great new addition to our current Southern writers.
He's the darker side to the rural South: for the lighter side
read T.R. Pearson's whimsical novel A Short History of a Small
Place.

Lyrical, dark, realistic romance
Slower than some of William Gay's other work (I would recommend Twilight, which blew me away, as well as The Long Home), Provinces of Night is concerned with the fortunes of the Bloodworth family. We are in red-neck country, 1952, and hillbilly eccentricities abound. E F Bloodworth is the patriarch and in common with most of the male members of the clan seems possessed with a ferocious wanderlust. This time though, he's wandering homewards, but as he arrives his sons set off to roam. Boyd is looking for his wife, but only so that he can kill the travelling salesman that took her away from him. Alcoholic Warren finds money-making easy, but he's absent for much of the book on various schemes and vague-seeming projects. Brady, the youngest is the only one who stays put, and he's an oddball who thinks he can hex people into doing his bidding as he communes with his pack of wild dogs and looks after his old mother who is fast succumbing to dementia. Warren's son, good-looking Neal is a heartless womaniser and the only steady hand in the pack is Fleming, son of Boyd.

Gay's landscapes are faultlessly painted on the retina and his humour is neatly tuned to the hard-wrought lives depicted. There are some brilliant set-pieces, including a winter ice storm and a visit to an out-of-state drive-in movie in a clapped out car. Characterisation does sometimes seem to be chosen from a stereotypical wild west dressing-up box, but Gay's writing style is intense, atmospheric and evocative, at times poetic. The book sags a little in the mid-section and the best story-line belongs to Fleming Bloodworth and his attenuated courting of the enigmatic Raven Lee. Mostly satisfying and engrossing, there are a few hitches and schematic diversions in this journey to an unashamedly romantic denouement.

I've found another Cormac McCarthy!!!!!
I discovered Cormac McCarthy, with 'The Road,' and was so 'blown away' that I bought all of his books...and remained in awe of his superb writing. Impatiently waiting for new ones by him, I chanced on the reviews and through them discovered William Gay (as a similar style.)I read this book of short stories a couple of weeks ago & was not disappointed. I am now halfway through his other, 'Twilight,'which is just as un-put-downable. I look forward to 'The Long Home,' which is patiently waiting on my bookshelf. A genius of a writer!
If anyone out there can recommend more in 'this style of writing,' I would appreciate. I already have a Flannery O'Connor, waiting to savour also! Best, Marian