Penny, a promising young singer, is the designated driver and killed on impact. The novel centres around a tragic car accident involving high school seniors just after graduation. This novel is creepier than anything Steven King ever wrote, hands down.“That was the thing we realized: for visitors, Nantucket wasn’t just a place it was also a fantasy of American summertime that kept people warm and happy all year long.” Įlin Hilderbrand’s Summerland presents a different side of Nantucket - the real people, so to speak, who live there year-round, and have lives beyond the “fantasy of American summertime” that draw tourists in. After Feast of Snakes I literally had nightmares for the next two nights. I had already read The Knock Out Artist, which was superb and thought FEAST would be a great progression. I was intending on reading more Crews novels but couldn’t after this one. FEAST OF SNAKES is a novel filled with violence, ignorant behavior, rape, castration, arson, sex, creepy Christians, animal cruelty, murder, and fecalphelia. At no point is there any redemption for Joe Lon, but instead his sister Beeder, and the servant’s Negro daughter, Lottie Mae, are the ones who gain some sort of redemption and freedom through the destruction of the oppressive male characters in the story, as does his wife who is freed from his hidden physical abuse. Some have argued that Joe Lon’s is a tale of redemption, but I disagree. By the end of the novel Joe Lon can only find comfort in murder, an activity so devoid of context for him that it makes him giggle.

There is also a bikini beauty contest and a pep rally the night before the hunt.Īll of this makes for an interesting backdrop to a complete emotional and spiritual breakdown of the human soul. Once a year Mystic has a rattlesnake roundup that brings alcohol crazed lunatics from all over the Bible Belt to this small town to hunt, kill, and eat snakes of all kinds. Most of the time Joe Lon Mackey beats up on himself for abusing his wife who takes care of his two youngest children and wallows in a mixture of past glory and present regrets knowing that his football injuries during high school cost him his future. His best friend is the town sheriff who lost his leg in Vietnam and who locks up and rapes young, black girls who reject his advances. His sister is a mental case who rubs fecal matter in her hair and watches television all day. Joe Lon spends his free days running the beer, bonded whiskey, and moonshine business that he inherited from his father, a championship pitbull breeder whose cruelty to animals is revered by locals, along with two Negro servants. This is the home of Joe Lon Mackey, one of the most terrifying protagonists since Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. In Mystic Georgia there is nothing but poor white trash and stereotypical blacks who still call the poor white trash Masser.

Barefoot by elin hilderbrand summary