The Horn Book Review

Here's a nice review of The Hanging Woods


THE HORN BOOK Magazine
July / August 2008


Scott Loring Sanders The Hanging Woods
326 pp. Houghton 3/08 isbn 978-0-618-88125-3 $16.00

You’re probably familiar with the idyllic boyhood coming-of-age story, full of friendship, mischief, and nostalgia. But Sanders’s debut novel is also an excellent example of Southern Gothic, and the heady, macabre mix of secrets and violence is evident from the opening lines: “In 1975, when I was thirteen, I killed a fox. It happened a few weeks after I’d snuck into my mother’s room and read her diary.” In a leisurely but compelling voice, Walter chronicles his friendship with Jimmy and Mothball and their assorted adventures: camping, doorbell ditching, gossiping, smoking, stealing, and swimming—not to mention Mothball’s quest to enter The Guinness Book of World Records with the longest-living decapitated turkey. But another story gradually emerges, a tangled web of jealousy, betrayal, and deceit that entraps the boys, their parents, and this small Alabama town. Eventually Walter discloses his mother’s dark secret, and several of his own, but one final bombshell casts his actions in an especially tragic light. This suspenseful story with its flawed but sympathetic characters and brooding atmosphere marks Sanders as a writer to watch. j.h.