Bulletin
Starred Review for The Hanging Woods--March 1st, 2008
In what initially seems like one of those small-town boyhood friendships, Walter is virtually inseparable from his pals Jimmy and Mothball; the trio roams through the Alabama woods and engages in some of the traditional mischief of young teenage boys, such as spinning stories about "the Troll," a veteran of the recently concluded Vietnam War, who's camping by the river. As events progress, however, the darker notes in Walter's narration, foreshadowed by his initial mention of finding a family secret, become more prominent, and the erstwhile friends dip increasingly into abusive bullying of one another. Dark then turns disastrous in a sequence of intertwined lethal events that recalls Greek tragedy even as it suggests a cursed reconfiguration of To Kill a Mockingbird. Sanders handles Walter's narration deftly, seeding it with clues to the upcoming wreck but masterfully camouflaging the story as an atmospheric period buddy tale, complete with the lacerating unchallenged racism of the place and time, until the corruption becomes inescapably overt. Readers accustomed to literary morality setting like concrete from the get-go will find this bracingly unsettling as well as enticingly mysterious, and it is sure to provoke discussion if used in the classroom as well as absorption as an independent read. DS
Publisher’s Weekly—Week of 3-10-08
The Hanging Woods Scott Loring Sanders. Houghton, $16 (336p) ISBN 978-0-618-88125-3
Squeamish readers might steer clear of this potent first novel, which begins with the 13-year-old narrator savagely bludgeoning a trapped fox to death in the Alabama woods. The brutal opening scene sets the tone for an increasingly disturbing tale centered on the narrator, Walter, and his two best friends, Jimmy and Raymond, nicknamed Mothball. As Walter tells readers, he has just discovered a devastating family secret in his mother’s diary (it is not revealed until close to the end), and a deep anger grows inside of him. The people around him, overcome by a sense of powerlessness, seem gripped by fury, too, and immune to violence. Mothball, for example, decides he will break the Guinness record for keeping alive a headless chicken; Sanders builds in the gruesome scenes with ax and chopping block, later with eye dropper and corn slurry, creating a horrifying metaphor for the blind cruelty that increasingly governs Walter’s actions. The tone only darkens, while the novel stays suspenseful from start to finish. (Mar.)
