Cover Image: Blackwood

Blackwood

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This was a darker book than I was expecting which shouldn't have surprised me given some of the content of Mr. Smith's first book but still. I liked the sense of atmosphere and scene but found the characters off-putting.

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Thank you Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for a complimentary copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Blackwood
By: Michael Farris Smith

REVIEW ☆☆☆☆
As a lifetime resident of the deep South, I can attest to the truth of the plague that is Kudzu. I have always sensed a creeping sinister something about these all consuming vines. The premise of this book may be fiction, but it is possible in my mind.

Red Bluff sounds like a lot of places I know with its desolation and lingering hopelessness. Everything about this dark tale-characters, landscape, atmosphere-speaks to me in some way, like I've dreamed of or experienced various aspects in different degrees. I love stories with sinister atmospheric character, and Blackwood definitely has this. Southern gothic tales are often fun but frightening reads that leave you with a feeling of dread and a wonder of what is possible.

Blackwood is not for everyone, but if you enjoy darker themes, such as despair, and a few (somewhat) folkloric elements in your stories, I think this book might be for you. Read if you dare!

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Southern Gothic, is not a genre I read very often because I don't normally find the stories interesting or well done. I'm glad to see that Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith is both interesting and exceedingly well done.

It is layered and multi-faceted, and there were parts I had to reread to make sure that I was understanding them correctly. Part of what trips me up sometimes with southern gothic books is the difference between literal and figurative in these stories. In the case of Blackwood, it is not about literal ghosts of the dead, but rather the ghosts of our past and how they invade our present.

Blackwood is not going to be everyone's cup of tea because it is such a dark tale. It is filled with darkness and despair, for every character. As you flip through each page, you keep looking for the light and hope that life will let up on these people, but it never does. By the end of the book, I had was both equally depressed and impressed, which is a rather interesting combination.

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No one will ever look at kudzu, the curse of the South, in the same light after reading Michael Farris Smith's deeply disturbing "Blackwood." The novel is yet another winner by this popular author who just gets better and better. He's once again delivered gut punches to the imagination with his writing. In "Blackwood," Smith has twisted the setting, a velvety green under- and overgrowth of thick kudzu vines, into a character of its own, the source of nightmares, disappearances and killings. The narrative shifts between Corben, a sculptor who has returned to Red Bluss, MS, to a house abandoned in the Blackwood. What started with the death of his father continues to torment Corben, and the story only gets darker with each step and soul who wanders into the kudzu forest. Three plots twist and turn just like the vine that strangles them, yet they come together in a terrifying ending. How can a vine that takes over anything that stands still be a diabolical evil spirit? Read "Blackwood" and find out.

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“I do not love you and I do not want you.”

Red Bluff, Mississippi is a small town haunted by ghosts of the past. The town is struggling, the storefronts are empty, and its people are haunted by memories. When outsiders arrive, their presence stirs up the ghosts. The town will never be the same.

A family of drifters rolls into Red Bluff: a man, a woman, and a boy. Homeless, starving, and mentally ill, their presence brings out the voices and the ghosts.

An artist returns to Red Bluff. Many years ago, he witnessed his father’s suicide.

The Kudzu that pervades the land begins to invade people's minds; luring them in, charming them, and, ultimately, ravishing them.

Blackwood has many layers. It’s not about literal ghosts, but about the past invading the present. It’s subtle and quiet, but quite vicious at the same time. This book destroyed me. There is no happiness, no message of hope; there is only defeat. The characters' pain, guilt, and sadness is heavy and afflicting to read. However, there is beauty in the prose and in some of the characters, which makes this an alluring, but difficult read.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company in exchange for an honest review.

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Ominous. Foreboding. Other Worldly.

Red Bluff, Mississippi has a dark feel to it. It is a place where few truly feel safe or welcome.

Could be the kudzu vines growing all over or the apprehension and anxiety everyone feels as soon as they step foot in town.

Though Colburn had planned to stay away from Red Bluff, since the loss of his father years ago, the town has been calling to him. As soon as he arrives, he knows that it is a bad place and yet he stays. When he meets Celia, the owner of the local bar, he feels a pull. A pull he wishes he could escape as he has escaped everything else in life and yet for the first time he cannot.

When the Grifters arrive in town, they of course, feel right at home. The child begins fending for the man and the woman, gathering food and other goods just as he was taught. The child however recognizes something. Feels it and yet he can do nothing.

There is terror, there is pain and there is a bleakness to “Blackwood” that is familiar to Michael Farris Smith’s novels. Then there is a mystical quality to this novel that surprised me. Surprised and admittedly felt esoteric, for lack of a better word. It had me questioning everything that I know to be true and for that I must give Michael Farris Smith kudos. While I didn’t love this novel quite as much as his other books, I quite enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing what else he has in store.

A buddy read with Kaceey.

Thank you to NetGalley, Little Brown and Company and Michael Farris Smith for the arc.

Published on Goodreads on 6.21.20.

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This Mississippi town is practically buried in a relentless vine, Kudzu. This turns out to be symbolic of the town itself. Though few are left in this little place, they carry generations of sins. Their unforgiveness, unacceptance, abandonment, selfishness, wickedness, and violence toward others are just some of the actions that cause them to be swallowed up one by one, just like the Blackwood of the area. As citizens begin to disappear one by one, their disappearance remains a mystery until one day the black hole is discovered. The sin's of the fathers passed down from generation to generation is symbolized by the blackness of the woods. One most likely will not care for the ending, but again this is the portrayal of lives not well lived. When evil rules, the end is never good.

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How have I not heard of this author?? This book was gritty and bleak and very very good. I'll have to look into the author's other works.

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I received this from Netgalley.com.

"The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was."

Wow. It took a little while to get into the rhythm of the story .. but when it happened .. wow. Dark, gritty, compelling. Great story, must read.

4☆

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Dark, Bleak And Sinister!

Welcome to Red Bluff Mississippi an aged small town that has seen better days and the hills that have been taken up by the ever present and fast growing
kudzu vines swallowing some houses and cars and anything else that had been left in their pathway. Sheriff Myers, a fair and honest man has lived in Red Bluff for a long time and is used to the slow pace and proud that he keeps his little town safe from the big city crimes until the day three drifters wandered into his haven and slowly but surely people are starting to disappear and there is a presence of evil in the atmosphere near the hills and coming closer to what used to be a safe place to live.

This was a gloomy and very bleak story with hints of the supernatural looming in the background allowing your imagination to take over and create unseen possible creatures or ghostly beings hovering just where you are searching and then leaving you wondering what is real and what was the character really seeing and hearing.
The timeless storytelling is wonderfully written with a southern gothic style. I enjoyed all the characters and many of the moral challenges that had been brought in to play showing the vulnerability of some of their hearts.
This was my first Michael Farris Smith book but certainly not my last and I highly recommend this story to any horror reader or anyone who enjoys dark gothic styles of writing.

I want to thank the publisher "Little Brown And Company" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this marvelously written book!

I have given a rating of 4 Sinister 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Stars!!

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"Somethins out there."

Red Bluff, Mississippi is a town that has known bad times. It's rural and overgrown with Kudzu vines. When Myer, the towns aged lawman, encounters a family of drifters, he wants to help, he tries to help, but how do you help those who don't appear to want it? Myer believes that the town that wears the pain of generations on its shoulders is still good. He believes this even as he, himself, is haunted by a suicide that occurred twenty years ago.

But as the Kudzu vines keep growing, so does the generations of danger, violence, regret, pain, and secrets. The kudzu overtakes everything including cars and homes. But the town remembers, or at least they believe they remember.

"You look broken and you are broken and it's okay to be broken."

They remember a young man who left and has now returned. They remember how his father died. Colburn knows they remember but he has come to town answering an advertisement, free space for artists. He drives throughout the countryside collecting scrapes, metal and other parts to use in his sculpting. He has a sad existence made better when he meets the local bar owner, Celia.

"...he felt solace in the peace that comes from knowing you have a purpose. Knowing you can affect this world."

But there is an evil that lurks here deep down in the Kudzu. Something is there, waiting, lurking, and like the kudzu will it overtake the people of the town? Will the people survive as they always have? What does it mean to be broken, to be unwanted, to feel unloved?

"I'm afraid. That's how I know I am alive."

There is the raw grittiness of hunger, of lust, of violence, of regret, of lost opportunities, of loss and of survival. The people in this town know pain, they know injustice, they know heartache and they know that something whispers in the night.

You know when you read a book and you enjoy it and you think it is good and you put it down happy. But then there are books, like this one, that pack a powerful punch. Beautifully written, full of beauty, full of pain, full of grace and I could literally feel the emotion dripping from the pages. Michael Farris Smith has a gift that he has poured into the pages of this book. No one writes desperation, pain, and about the bleakness of a hard life in such heartbreaking beautiful prose. There are good books and then there are great books. This is the later. A beautifully written, moving and thought-provoking book that raises the bar and doesn't disappoint.

Highly recommend.

Thank you to Little Brown and Company and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

**Quotes taken from an ARC and they are subject to change.

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"In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods.
The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged, sardonic lawman, still thinks it can prove itself - when confronted by a strange family of drifters, the sheriff believes that the people of Red Bluff can be accepting, rational, even good.

The opposite is true: this is a landscape of fear and ghosts - of regret and violence - transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding a terrible secret deeper still.

Colburn, a junkyard sculptor who's returned to Red Bluff, knows this pain all too well, though he too is willing to hope for more when he meets and falls in love with Celia, the local bar owner. The Deep South gives these noble, broken, and driven folks the gift of human connection while bestowing upon them the crippling weight of generations. With broken histories and vagabond hearts, the townsfolk wrestle with the evil in the woods - and the wickedness that lurks in each and every one of us."

You had me at kudzu.

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At this point, I am quite clearly an unabashed fan of Michael Farris Smith's work. I love the muscularity and beauty of his writing on a sentence level, the depth of his characterization, the richness of his settings, and the intelligence of his plots. He is a fantastic writer. With BLACKWOOD he continues his streak of heartrending and powerful novels. In this tale a family of drifters (Man, Woman, and child) come chugging into the town of Red Bluff, Mississippi in a "foulrunning Cadillac." Their lives will collide with the sheriff, Myer, and a sculptor, Colburn, who has violent ties to the community, and Celia, the local bar owner. Oh, and yeah, the kudzu. The merciless weed burrows its way into the story and the reader's consciousness as well. Words can't adequately describe how all of these lives intersect, but just know this is topnotch fiction. Michael Farris Smith is a must-read.

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This book is so well written, but it still took me a while to get invested in the story and the characters. A strange family comes to a small Mississippi town. Their car has broken down and they don’t have the money to repair it. So, they take to living on the outskirts of town. Meanwhile, a man returns to the town where he spent his youth. These new individuals manage to stir things up - fights break out, children go missing.
Smith gives you a total sense of place and time. “This place is one big ghost story.” The landscape is a character in its own right, kudzu covering everything. It’s a dark book, a sad and bleak one. The characters all have troubles, there are no happy souls here.
The writing reminds me of Faulkner, true southern literature. Sparse and lush at the same time. This is a book that starts slow but picks up the pace as it goes on. I wanted to flip pages as fast as I could but also wanted to savor the experience and the writing.
I was left shaking my head at the horror of it all. This isn’t a book with nice tidy answers.
My thanks to netgalley and Little, Browns and Company for an advance copy of this book.

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BLACKWOOD
Michael Farris Smith
Little, Brown
ISBN 978-0-316-52981-5
Hardcover
Southern Gothic Literature

There is no place to stop once one begins reading BLACKWOOD. That would include the vast space in place and time created after the last page is read. This is a story that haunts, echos, whispers, and screams in the corners of mind and memory for days after one has finished it, so much so that it drowns out almost everything else.

The novels of Michael Farris Smith are like that. Smith burst forth fully realized as a major talent with THE HANDS OF STRANGERS and has continuously enlarged the boundaries of his talent since that time. The newly published BLACKWOOD is Smith’s most fully realized work to date, a dark, grim and very real tale set in a crossroads Mississippi municipality that is a push away from extinction. BLACKWOOD is the story of that push come to town.

The town in question is Red Bluff, Mississippi, a place where the vacant storefronts outnumber those which are occupied and the town tavern is arguably the most successful business. Red Bluff, in order to attract attention to itself and to fill in the gaps created by business failures, offers the storefronts to artists of different sorts in a sort of sweat equity deal. The only taker is an enigmatic stranger named Colbern who is a metal sculptor of sorts. Colburn combs the local businesses and streets looking to repurpose castoff springs, bars, and the like to repurpose them to his own vision. Colburn, however, is not a stranger to Red Bluff. His family experienced a personal tragedy when he was a child, an event in which he had a critical hand, unbeknownst to all but himself. The degree and extent of the damage which has been inflicted upon Colburn, and that which he is capable of inflicting upon others, is revealed only gradually after he makes the acquaintance and gains the attraction of Celia, the owner of the town bar. While Colburn’s inner workings are being revealed, a nomadic family arrives in Red Bluff, their appearance heralded by the breakdown of their automobile in the town post office parking lot. The family consists of a beaten-down woman, a man with monstrous proclivities, and a boy of indeterminate age who is but a half-step or so away from being feral. Colburn and the family both attract the attention of Myer, the town police officer, at different times and for different reasons. Myer is a good and decent man whose restraint and hesitancy to engage in charitable and hostile acts at the right place and time have profound and fatal consequences as events and circumstances in Red Bluff spiral out of his and anyone’s else’s control, resulting in a stunning and dark conclusion that seems preordained and is frightening real.

You will not just want to read BLACKWOOD. You will want to keep it and hold it close, to read it again and yet again. For all of its dark passages, woebegone passages, and subtle plot misdirection, Smith writes with a dark and frightening beauty that is so addictive once beheld that nothing less will do. Read BLACKWOOD while saving time to become familiar with Smith’s backlist. A master is in our midst.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2020, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

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It pains me to to do this - because I really like this author. The problem is I can’t find myself giving one single care about any character in this book. I’ll keep reading his books though. Maybe it’s just the time we are in.

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I don’t even know where to start. The writing was amazing and the storyline extremely graceful. I moved through Blackwood with complete ease, it was a definite page turner. But. I did not like this story. I appreciate it. But. It was too dark for me. So, while this wasn’t exactly my favorite, it was excellent story telling.

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Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 3, 2020

Dark, disturbing, and gritty, Blackwood is Michael Farris Smith’s latest contribution to the literature of the American underbelly. Set in a kudzu-covered valley in rural Mississippi, the novel follows characters who seek escape. The kudzu vines that build a cage around houses and abandoned cars are presumably a symbol of the forces that strangle freedom, forcing characters to reach for figurative machetes to cut themselves free.

Colburn Evans comes back to his hometown in response to an ad that offers a free storefront to anyone who agrees to become a town resident. Colburn assembles sculptures from scrap metal. He envisions the storefront as his workshop. But Colburn finds himself shunned by residents who recall his family’s past, including his father’s apparent suicide-by-hanging. A character tells Colburn that the valley is “one big ghost story. Stories about the past. Stories about the man who killed himself. It’s what we do.” Memories of his father’s death haunt Colburn for reasons that only become fully apparent late in the novel.

The novel’s most decent character is Myers, the local sheriff. He comes across a drifter who appears to be living in a broken down Cadillac with a woman and their son. The story begins with a look at the drifter, who is well along the road to derangement. The fate of the woman and her two children is one of the plot-drivers. The boy soon becomes a fixture in the valley, rummaging through garbage for food, collecting cans in a shopping cart, warily accepting charity, finding independence because he has no choice. Myers eventually comes to regret that he didn’t arrange to repair the Cadillac and send the family on their way. The novel suggests that for a decent person, regrets of that nature — why didn’t I do more to help? —are inevitable.

Colburn is drawn to a bar owner named Celia, another decent character but one who is habitually drawn to troubled men. One of those men, a fellow named Dixon, is married, which creates a conflict (mostly in Dixon’s mind) between Dixon and Colburn. Dixon’s wife wants Dixon to end his embarrassing relationship with Celia while Celia wants Dixon to let her make her own choices about how she lives her life. Like other characters in Blackwood, Dixon struggles to contain the bitterness that compels him to make decisions he will only regret.

The characters coalesce in a plot that uses random acts of violence to illuminate the tragic circumstances of people who cannot see beyond their mistaken assumptions. An unnoticed woman goes missing, followed by the disappearance of twin children. Suspicion focuses on Colburn, since he is an outsider. Eventually another key character goes missing. The misinterpretation of circumstantial evidence leads multiple characters to arrive at false conclusions about the guilt of other characters. Nobody gets it right because they don’t try to get past their anger and view the facts with a rational mind.

In the end, the novel offers a lesson in compassion and understanding. Characters discover the peril of making harsh and unnecessary judgments. One outcast regrets his failure to recognize how he viewed another outcast. “He thought of the boy and the life he had lived and the way he looked and his inability to participate and all that he had missed and would forever miss. It’s not your fault and I looked at you the same way the world looked at you and I should have known better.” If we can’t recognize pain in people who are like us, the novel seems to ask, how can we hope to understand people who are less fortunate than us?

The story’s grit is offset by its grace. Smith’s fluid prose rises above the brutal world it illuminates. Dialog is sharp; atmosphere exudes from the pages. The story is intense, the themes are timeless, and the characters — like your neighbors — are recognizable as types but surprising as individuals. This isn’t a “feel good” story so it might not travel to the top of the best seller charts, but it is a better book than most of the best sellers I’ve read.

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I liked the parts of this book that were not overwhelmed with creepy kudzu and ghosts. The author couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether this was Southern gothic or a horror story. There is plenty of evil in the townsfolk and its visitors. No need to attribute it to the foliage. I’m probably not the right audience for this book. I haven’t liked this author before and I generally think spooky goings on are just silly. Other people seem to love the book. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

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A small southern town a group of creepy visitors so chilling g.A new author for me will be grabbing up all his books.I was totally drawn in to this story the characters an eerie read I could not put down.#netgalley#littlebrown

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