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40x40

Cori June (3033 KP) rated The Rules of the Road in Books

Oct 17, 2021  
The Rules of the Road
The Rules of the Road
C.B. Jones | 2021 | Horror
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Tension (0 more)
This is a great horror book that had a slow tension and you don't want to read on the lonely road. The cheery voice of Buck Hensley interrupts the late night drive of our narrator, and leads us down a rabbit hole of short stories containing urban legends about other people's encounters and their rules.
It's a creepy read. There are three different fonts that are used Italics, bold, and regular so it's a little confusing at the beginning until you get used to it. Definitely something new.
  
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40x40

Eilidh G Clark (177 KP) rated Dirt Road in Books

May 13, 2017  
Dirt Road
Dirt Road
James Kelman | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Kelman's best novel yet. Gets to the heart of human emotion. (0 more)
Nothing (0 more)
Kelman is an expert in understanding people
Kelman’s new novel Dirt Road is story that takes both characters and reader on a journey right from the outset, but the journey is more than it seems. The novel begins in the West coast of Scotland where we learn that Murdo - a sixteen-year-old boy - and his father Tom are mourning the death of their mother/wife and sister/daughter. Searching for solace, they embark on a journey to Alabama, U.S.A to spend time with Uncle John and Aunt Maureen. For Murdo, family is just a happy memory, a moment in time captured in a photograph, ‘The family was four and not just him and Dad’, whilst for Tom, family is the bond that holds them together. Throughout the journey, Tom strives to guide his son and keep him on ‘the right path’, yet Murdo, as we will learn, has a path of his own to find. Stifled by the fathers influence, the boy has a tendency to stray, thus when they reach Allentown Mississippi, Murdo stumbles upon a family of musicians led by Zydeco performer Queen Monzee-ay. Murdo is as drawn to music as his father is to family, the boy himself is an accomplished accordion player, and when he is offered an opportunity to play a set with Queen Monzee-ay in two weeks’ time, we watch as the road between father and son diverges and choice and risk becomes the key plot in the story.
While this may appear a simple story line, Kelman’s exploration into the fragmented relationship between father and son gives the reader an honest analysis of family and grief. The third person narrator, with bursts of free indirect discourse from Murdo, allows the reader both an internal and external insight into the constraints of family. This parallel leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable, yet with a conflicting heart. This is Kelman’s unique writing style at its best.
Dirt Road is more than a novel of grief and family relationships though; it is a novel of risk, of following new paths with uncertainties, about leaving behind the familiarities and safety of the past and following the heart. It is about deep connections; for Murdo this is through music and the feeling of freedom that he associates with music, whilst for the other characters it is about cultural connections and Scottish ancestry. Kelman’s clever use of parallels shows the reader the intensity of human connections whilst suggesting that change and progression is possible. This great novel will linger in your thoughts for weeks after you put it down, and it brings to mind a poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

For the full poem visit (https://www.poetryfoundation.org).

Dirt Road by James Kelman
Canongate Books (14 July 2016)