Five of Daniel Woodrell's published novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Tomato Red won the PEN West Award for the Novel in 1999. Woodrell lives in the Ozarks near the Arkansas line with his wife, Katie Estill.
"The Maid's Version is able to tell a community's history in
stunning second-, third-, and even fourth-hand
recollection."--Mesha Maren, LA Review of Books
"The Maid's Version is stunning. Daniel Woodrell writes flowing,
cataclysmic prose with the irresistible aura of fate about
it."--Sam Shepard
"The Maid's Version shows one of America's best writers at the top
of his game."--Kevin Nguyen, Grantland
"Compact and soulful....The Maid's Version's worth is also in its
luminous prose. Woodrell's sentences bristle with finely tuned
language and almost biblical rhythms of his characters'
speech....Further proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrell is a
writer to cherish."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times
"Daniel Woodrell is the American writer we increasingly look to for
the latest urgent news on the American soul. The Maid's Version is
a beautiful engine of a novel, whose cogs were not entirely made by
human agency, one might hazard to say. As regards the level of
reading pleasure, the highest. As regards the level of literary
achievement, the highest."--Sebastian Barry
"For readers new to Daniel Woodrell's work, The Maid's Version is a
perfect introduction and an invitation to read more. It's a short
book...but there are lifetimes captured here....Throughout this
remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era
that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our
own."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR Books
"I'd gladly sign a petition to see Mr. Woodrell included on any
roll call of America's finest living writers. He conveys a sense of
the past with the stringent affection of Katherine Anne Porter; his
turns at bedlam humor are worthy of Charles Portis; and his
gorgeously tangled prose is all his own."--Sam Sacks, Wall Street
Journal
"The author of nine widely-praised novels is sometimes described as
a master of Ozark noir, but his gripping narratives and
pitch-perfect language transcend genre."--Reader's Digest, "23
Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now"
"Woodrell is, like every truly great novelist, a mythmaker with
both eyes on the absolute....The Maid's Version is one more
resplendent trophy on the shelf of an American master."--William
Giraldi, The Daily Beast
"Woodrell's language echoes melodically with the vernacular of the
Ozarks, traces of folk song, the cadences of the Bible. Sometimes
he offers, seemingly with little effort, as if from a bottomless
repository, pithy similes. This of Alma: "grief has chomped on her
like wolves do a calf". At other times, sentences leisurely
unspool: "The Missouri river floated sixty yards from the street,
and there was a small crotchety tavern on the corner." [Woodrell]
belongs within a great, predominantly male tradition of American
writing that stretches back to Mark Twain and runs on through Willa
Cather, William Faulkner, James Dickey, Larry McMurtry to Cormac
McCarthy. From the vantage of their willed exile they have
produced, down the generations, some of their country's finest
fiction and poetry."--Peter Pierce, the Australian
Editors' Choice, Times Book ReviewA Best Book of 2013, Slate A Best
Book of 2013, Washington PostAn NPR 2013 "Great Read"Winner of the
2014 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for FictionA Top Five Book of
the Year, Kansas City StarA Best Book of 2013, St. Louis Post
DispatchKirkus Reviews selection for the Best Books of 2013A Best
Book of 2013, Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)An Irish Times Book of
the YearAn Irish Mail on Sunday Book of the YearA Favorite Book of
2013, National Post (Canada)One of Amazon's Top 10 Best Books of
the MonthAn Amazon Best Book of the YearA Best Work of Fiction in
2013, Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
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