There's probably a bright line that runs from William Faulkner to Flannery O'Connor to Cormac McCarthy, but I'll leave that for others to describe. What interests me is the little branch line that runs from O'Connor to Joe R Lansdale, converging, I'm sure, with many lines from the likes of Hemingway and ER Burroughs. Lansdale and Connor have an amazing amount in common: there are similarities of style, voice, setting and preoccupations. Lansdlae, of course, is firmly and unashamedly a genre writer: crime, horror, fantasy or sci fi all mix it up in his novels and stories. Nonetheless, the strangest and most bizarre occurrences in his work are often firmly situated in the quotidian, usually at the point where violence, stupidity and random acts of fate intersect. O'Connor isn't quite as gonzo as Lansdale, and in this book at least, she demonstrates a dedication to her singularity of vision and a commitment to the senseless logic of her character's lives that shows why Lansdale is someone you read for deliciously bizarre entertainment, and O'Connor is someone you read for a vision of the world warped by heat and religion and insanity and guilt into a fun-house reflection of the human condition.

Hazel Motes preaches the word of The Church Without Christ, trying to chase Jesus out of people's lives, but really trying to chase Him out of his own head. He haunts the blind preacher Asa Hawkes, hoping to be saved, and tangles with Asa's twisted daughter, while his own unwanted disciple, Enoch Emery, offers up a new messiah.

This is a fierce, shouted, heated tale that takes some untangling. Naked impulse and unshakeable certainty built on a foundation of loss and fear and death and rejection and guilt rule the lives of Hazel and Enoch, as if they can free themselves from the trap of the world by bluster and rage. The world rarely even acknowledges them, and then only as a nuisance. Whether in the end they achieve some form of freedom or peace of mind is hard to say, but they each make a bloody sacrifice to get there.