I'm pretty sure I really liked this novel. Why the hedge? Well, there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on that left me unsure, and I think it had to do with a plot development that felt maybe a shade too easy or underdeveloped? Regardless, this was an engaging, quick summer read with lean prose, interesting characters, realistic (often quirky) dialogue, and a textured midwestern setting.

This book was so weird, a lot happened but it was all written in such a nonchalant manner that I found myself rereading paragraphs just to make sure it really had happened. I loved the story even if it took a bit of a dumb supernatural turn and some of the characters were kind of bare with no real progression.

This little novel is packed with reprobates and untrustworthy characters, with Pierre Hunter and Stella Roamarin at the center of a plot that turns on a mystical relationship between the two. Somehow Drury deftly combines the neonoir with more inexplicable plot elements to create a page-turner with a brutal ending. My first time reading Drury and I’ll look forward to reading more.

Tom Drury is the Hal Hartley of midwestern fiction.

I've been randomly selecting books to read in the library quite frequently these days. The Driftless Area was one such book. I picked it up in the library this afternoon and read it in one sitting. (I read it at the library, actually. In the corner by the paperback romances, which I certainly didn't do on purpose, let me tell you.)

Anyhow, yes! This was an odd little book, but strangely satisfying. And with a plot twist or two that I didn't see coming.

Chalk another point up for random library books!

Had I not read anything of Drury's before this would have flattened me. As it was I enjoyed it a lot even though there were a couple of moments of puzzling narrative conceit. Even still, he handled those very well to make a lovely, pleasant novel.

This book is as if the David Lynch, creator of Twin Peaks fame were writing novels. It's a very neonoir story of a hapless bartender and dreamer named Pierre Hunter, who by chance happens upon a beautiful woman, and large sum of money, and where his life goes from there. (The Driftless Area is an actual region of southwestern Wisconsin and the northern tip of Illinois.) Drury has a way with language and vivid phrase like describing a lawyer as "bringing a fog of cologne like the gift shop of a failing hospital" (Rating: 4.8-5.0 stars/5.0).