Sons of the Rapture

I just finished reading Todd Dills's Sons of the Rapture and loved it. There's a lot going on in this book. It's part Southern epic, part Western, part postmodern post-Reconstruction novel, part alcoholic redemptive treatise. All this in a prose that is sometimes eerily reminiscent of Kerouac, but entirely different from J.K. at the same time. I'd been meaning to get to this book earlier, as I picked it up at a reading last November. But, life, you know.


This novel's interesting from a narrative perspective as well. There's an over-arching first person narrative from 30 year-old Billy Jones that's the driving force of the book. Meantime, we get other first person POVs, and third person as well. By the end of the book, however, we learn that Billy's been writing (journal entries at the very least), and he actually addresses the reader, and we have to wonder if--at times--the other POVs aren't simply Billy's alter-egos getting their thoughts out on paper in a moment of drunken genius.


The story climaxes as Johnny Jones--Billy's eccentric and estranged father--drives a small herd of cattle down the freeway into downtown Chicago and ends up in the police's crosshairs. Utterly absurd, but beatifully rendered and completely believable. There's an odd mix in this one. A book you should definitely read.