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    Tomato Red: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Tomato Red: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Tomato Red: A Novel
    Audiobook4 hours

    Tomato Red: A Novel

    Written by Daniel Woodrell

    Narrated by Brian Troxell

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A sharp and funny addition to Daniel Woodrell's collection of "country noir" novels, featuring anti-hero Sammy Barlach and Jamalee Merridew, her hair tomato red with rage and ambition.
    In the Ozarks, what you are is where you are born. If you're born in Venus Holler, you're not much. For Jamalee Merridew, Venus Holler just won't cut it. Jamalee sees her brother Jason, blessed with drop-dead gorgeous looks and the local object of female obsession, as her ticket out of town. But Jason may just be gay, and in the hills and hollows of the Ozarks that is the most dangerous and courageous thing a man could be.
    Enter Sammy Barlach, a loser ex-con passing through a tired nowhere on the way to a fresher nowhere. Jamalee thinks Sammy is just the kind of muscle she and Jason need.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateApr 24, 2012
    ISBN9781611135053
    Unavailable
    Tomato Red: A Novel

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    Reviews for Tomato Red

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      This is a short novel in a style the author calls 'Country Noir'. It takes place in the Ozarks, during the modern day. It follows 4 people from the wrong side of the tracks, essentially poor white trash. Three are related; a faded prostitute mother and her two semi-grown (teenage) wild offspring, They despise their mother and want to escape the life their birth place, and family name guarantee them in this small town. The problem is they both lack the education, the polish or the smarts to escape. It doesn't help that they mostly eschew hard work in favor of petty crime (that escalates as the story progresses). The fourth member is an older guy (mid to late 20s), very similar to them, but with actual prison experience. Sammy is able to reflect on what he is, and where he will end up if he keeps on, but unable to make a change. He is a drifter constantly looking for a ready-made family to take him in. He finds that family with the Merridews.He notes the brother and sister are a bit too familiar with the parts of each other that siblings usually keep private from one another. The boy, Jason is the prettiest boy in the Ozarks, and can't quite decide if has the courage to be gay. His sister Jamalee feels the world owes her something, and is easily angered by everyone and every interaction. She is the brains behind their escape, and is willing to use Sammy to make that happen. Sammy wants to fit in and if Jama won't have sex with him, he is fine with getting freebies from their mother Bev, in between her clients.The story follows them for a short time as they hatch plots, and commit crimes often at the spur of the moment. The crimes are either to help them get out (in Jama's mind), or to hand out revenge to those whom Jama thinks have wronged them. There is no thought given to the consequences, or to the fact that because the place is so small it will be known who committed the crime. Their misdeeds eventually result in the death of one of the four, when they anger those is power. Besides Sammy, who can see the train wreck coming, but can't get out of the way, Bev is the wise one of the four. They are also probably the only sympathetic characters.The book has a predictable ending, given the characters and their actions. It wasn't bad, but it really doesn't have a point. It is more like a fly on the wall type of read, where you can visit the type of people and life most would have nothing to do with in real life.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The Ozarks' Jim Thompson. A mini-masterpiece. Textured like Thompson's After Dark My Sweet.
    • 3/5
      Man, Woodrell can write like a house on fire. I'm not sure if the story had quite enough gas in the tank to reach the finish line, but I could read his descriptions of things all day. Haunting Ozark noir that captures the weary desperation of its characters perfectly.
    • 4/5
      First Woodrell and cannot wait to get my hands on more! Will leave the plot etc to others - but the way this man writes....wow!
    • 5/5
      Once in a long while, a book comes along whose narrative voice is so compelling it grabs you from beginning to end. This was one of those books.

      The four main characters occupy the lowest rung of the social totem pole in the Missouri Ozarks. The observations our narrator makes can sometimes be hilarious:

      "The Merridew kids shared the coop with Rod's dog. It was a shaggy, lazy dog named Biscuit who had the personality of a defeated old alcoholic uncle, more or less. Biscuit mainly just laid there and thumped his tail pleasantly. Once in a while he goes to the screen door and stands there scanning the street like he's hopin' to see the mailman bringing his disability check, then moans in disappointment and flops back down."

      But make no mistake. This book is no comedy. It hardly can be, when the people at the center are treated as society's throwaways, for whom there is no justice and it is dangerous to have dreams. Here's the lesson:

      "You know, the regular well-to-do world should relax about us types. Us lower sorts. You can never mount a true war of us against the rich 'cause the rich can always hire us to kill each other. Which they and us have done plenty, and with brutal dumb glee. Just toss a five-dollar bill in the mud and sip wine and watch our bodies start flyin' about, crashing headfirst into blunt objects, and our teeth sprinkle from our mouths, and the blood gets flowing in such amusing ways. Now it's always just us against us--guess who loses?"

      This book illuminated an American subculture very different from my own--one where the American dream has gone to die--and I think it will stay with me for a very long time.
    • 4/5
      If you are from "the wrong side of the tracks" can you ever realize your dream of becoming something more than poor white trash? Jamalee has dreams of rising above her social status. At nineteen, she lives with her younger, beautiful, gay brother; their prostitute mother lives next door. Sammy Barlach, a 24-year-old drifter looking for people to belong to comes into their lives and becomes part of the plan. This is a melancholy story; it's hard to believe that life holds any major promise for Jamalee and her family. The writing is masterful; it really contributes to the mood of the story. And the ending felt like a punch in the stomach.
    • 4/5
      Daniel Woodrell is an author that I find very readable, his books are usually set in the Ozarks and his writing captures the flavor and styling of red neck recklessness. I did find Tomato Red to have a sad theme dealing as it does with the despair and hopelessness of being on lower end of the social scale with no escape route from the white trash world they were in but the book is nevertheless vividly and humorously written.Sammy Barlach, the narrator and anti-hero of the book tells his story honestly and simply. During the course of a break-and-enter robbery of a vacant house, he comes into contact with the engaging sister and brother team of Jamalee, the Tomato Red of the title and her brother, Jason. Sammy is pulled into their life and before too long finds himself living with them next door to their prostitute mother, Bev. They become a weird sort of family with Sammy being rather taken with both mother and daughter. Of course being a Woodrell novel, violence is always on the horizon and although this story becomes a tragedy, the telling of it is colorful and engaging. At times, Tomato Red is a little overwritten and melodramatic, but the author is extremely adapt at telling a story that can change from light-hearted humor to dark violence within a page. Sammy’s story is in reality a strong, violent statement on the hopelessness of poverty in America.
    • 5/5
      Sammy Barlach is looking for a cross to hang himself on and he finds just the right one when he meets Tomato Red.Tomato Red, aka Jamalee, and her brother Jason live hanging by their fingernails in a backwater town in the Ozarks. When they meet Sammy they feel like they’ve found the right fall guy/battering ram to help them get the hell out of there. Nothing is clear though as to how or from whom. Instead Woodrell paints a deeply layered picture of poverty, hopelessness and crystal clear knowledge of where those things will get them. Sammy narrates the tale and his voice is cutting and incredibly descriptive in a jangly and unexpected way. I loved it. The writing is raw, imaginative and deft and reminded me of William Gay. I think they deal with similar themes. Gay is more gothic and Woodrell more noir, if that makes sense. This is not a book you can skim and you won’t want to despite the fairly bleak circumstances. The thing is, Sammy himself is not bleak. He takes life as he finds it and while not always doing the easy thing, he does what feels right to him and always pays the price without whining or recriminations. Going in Sammy pretty much tells you that his tale won’t end well and there’s no reason to think he’s lying. The denouement is subtle, but treacherous and I had to go back to an earlier scene to make that final one line up because I had forgotten which thread bound them together. When it hits it's like a heavy blow that you knew would hit you eventually, but didn’t see coming. Very effective without being hyperbolic or graphic. Sad, too, but there is a slim cord of hope in the end, but I do wonder if it will hold.
    • 3/5
      Started well and sucked me in. Loved the characters and the story line, but was disappointed with the ending. Still, really enjoy the way Woodrell turns a phrase. Can't wait to read more by this author. Hopefully we haven't hear the last of Jamalee.
    • 3/5
      Woodrell is such an amazing author he can make even the slowest moving story seem exciting (at least most of the time). I'm not sure what made me finish this book about four white trash self depreciating losers, except for how it was written. It's a story that I never would have cared to listen to, but somehow being told by Woodrell it doesn't seem like a complete waste of time.
    • 4/5
      Daniel Woodrell's Ozark novel's are masterpieces of literature. Beautifully written with language that keeps the reader spellbound. Having read a few other of his Ozark novels, I found this one not quite as good, hence the 4 star rating, but still very, very good. Tomato Red differs in that there is a sort-of happy ending, even if it is bittersweet and doesn't include everyone. It is a short book at just over 200 pages but as usual, Woodrell manages to fully flesh out the four main characters: Bev, the "whore", her two children 17yo gay Jason and slightly older sister Jamalee who wants to be rich and everything a Venus Holler resident is not. Along comes Sammy Barlach, drifter, petty felon, and all round loser who is taken right into being one of the family and maybe he will be the one who finally helps the family to more than just "dream" the impossible dream. But tradgedy strikes, someone is killed and now is the time for the future to be dashed or reclaimed. A sad tale of poverty and those looking only to be loved. Circumstances cause their downfall, not the past prejudices as to who they are hooker, homosexual, unrealistic dreamer, and petty felon. These are not even an issue when they make the biggest mistake of their lives and one of them has to brutally pay the price for it. A dark tale full of eccentric characters and even though the family is unique I found Sammy to be my favourite character as to what drove him to have the desire to be a part of and protector of this quirky, dysfunctional family.
    • 5/5
      Sammy Barlach (pronounced with “lack at the tail”) is a petty thief anti-hero, new to West Table, Mo., with a sharp tongue and tough-guy ways, although his heart isn’t in the tough guy part. He falls in with Jamalee and her beautiful apprentice hairdresser brother Jason, who act ‘familiar with areas of each other that most siblings probably keep private,” when they both break into the same large house. He meets their part-time prostitute mother, Bev, and realizes “I have always just wanted to fit in somewhere, and this is the bunch that would have me.”Woodrell has the ability to pop in a gold nugget or two of prose on almost every page:“Venus Holler was the most low-life part of town, so I already knew where it was.”“If a train passed at breakfast time, all the eggs ended up scrambled.”A pistol shines “like a Shreveport pimp’s favorite teeth.” An old book smells “like a cotton picker’s hatband.” Even the weather sounds pained: “The sky had turned ash gray and greasy with sweat, like a heart attack was coming up from the south.”And maybe my favorite: “They were folks you’d like to meet sometime and leave in a car trunk at the airport.”Sammy seems predestined for trouble, hardship and a bad end, knows it and doesn’t try to fight it. He’s a vivid character and Tomato Red is a wonderful book.