By Terry Barr
David Joy writes realistically violent novels, mainly set in the Appalachian region of western North Carolina. One of the bloodier moments in his second novel, The Weight of This World, concerns a returned Afghani War vet who exacts revenge on a man who has skewered the vet’s dog. The vet forces this killer on an extended last trek through the mountains.
And on that death march, the vet uses a tactic he learned from his wartime enemy: before the march begins, he takes a sharp knife and carves off the soles of the killer’s feet. It makes the walking excruciating, but still possible.
A character who enacts this sort of violent revenge has to be single-minded and obsessed by red-hot passion, right? We can’t like him or appreciate the rest of him, can we? Well, not exactly true. We have to take him as wholly as we can; we have to be willing to see what he sees and consider the meanings of his past, triggered by his observations. Continue Reading…