Ron Rash
Text Publishing
Otago Daily Times, April 13th 2013
Ron Rash has made a name for himself as something of a modern Steinbeck, with his bleak and brutal depictions of life among the small, struggling communities of West Virginia. His latest short story collection, Nothing Gold Can Stay, is as good as anything he has written.
Ranging in time from the War of Independence to the present day, each is unique and haunting, tied together by place and sensibility. All the characters seek to escape their circumstances, but those that do pay a high price, and what redemption they do find is meagre at best.
There are few, if any, quiet epiphanies, and many of the tales are shockingly violent. In one a father demands a hand for a hand in exchange from allowing his daughter to wed, in another a linguistics student’s quest for lost oral traditional leaves him literally speechless, but far from being gratuitous, there is an inevitability to events that mean they could not end any other way.
That there is not a word wasted in any of them – in both style and form Rash is far more Hemingway that Joyce), which only serves to heighten their impact. If this sounds off-putting, it is not meant to be; the art and the beauty of short stories come from their concentration of emotion, and despite the collection’s darkness, the final tale holds out a quiet suggestion of hope. Those who are already Ron Rash fans will love it, and for those unfamiliar with his writing, it would be an excellent introduction.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/concentrations-emotion-master
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