Joy’s prose cut an alternating line between poetic, and clean-cut. I enjoy it very much. Almost as if most of the sentences are wind-ups for knock outs.

As to the meat of the thing, thematically, this is nothing really new. When a black woman is murdered, the subsequent investigation acts as a catalyst for a southern town to regurgitate their internalized biases. At its heart this aims to interrogate white fragility in a more nuanced way than is typical, but not as in-depth, I think, as some lit written by people of colour on the subject. In a way, that’s what makes this work. It’s almost fish-out-of-water because most of the characters don’t know why they’re acting the way they are; or reacting, rather.

The plot is nice and twisty, the characters archetypical for a purpose, and the setup leading up to the investigation rocked me back on my heels. Rather than use it as a police procedural hook, or a graphic murder, it’s a slow, incisive portrayal of the characters and town, and cultural.

In the end, it feels well done, but it did not blow me out of the water. But I have read a lot of books on the subject. Both nonfiction and other.

Another point in its favour is the audiobook. Narrated by the same person as the new Cormac McCarthy books, boy does this man narrate well, and particularly southern books. Really stellar stuff.