Twilight: A Novel

By William Gay

Suspecting that something is amiss with their father’s burial, teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought for him. Worse, they learn that the undertaker, Fenton Breece, has been grotesquely manipulating the dead.

Armed with incriminating photographs, Tyler becomes obsessed with bringing the perverse undertaker to justice. But first, he must outrun Granville Sutter, a local strongman and convicted murderer hired by Fenton to destroy the evidence. With his poetic, haunting prose, William Gay rewrites the rules of the gothic fairytale while exploring the classic Southern themes of good and evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9780385672542

William Gay

William Gay is the author of the novel The Long Home. His short stories have appeared in Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and New Stories from the South 1999 and 2000. He was awarded the 1999 William Peden Award and the 2000 James A. Michener Memorial Priz

Reviews for Twilight

[librarianbryan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sacrilegious mashup of high arch Southern Gothic and hard-boiled crime tropes that works because of its audacity w/r/t form and content. And all the backwater hillbilly horseshit, yeah, I know all about that.

[mrgan-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I like how Gay writes in a style and grammar wholly his own, not giving any shits about what an editor or even a reader might think.

[john_warner-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tyler is angry when he discovers that the casket purchased to bury his father wasn't the one used. Further investigation yields info that the local undertaker, Fenton Breece, has a history of desecrating the dead. Now possessing incriminating photographs, Tyler wants revenge. However, to accomplish this, he must evade a hired killer, Granville Sutter who will track him over a three county, heavily wooded area in Tennessee known as the Harrikin. Although it took some adjustment in reading this author's prose, I soon learned to love his writing. Many words are written in the dialogue of the characters; Harrikin is actually the vernacular for Hurricane, which is a perfect description for the chaos the antagonist and protagonist find themselves. William Gay creates compound words that would make many a high school English teacher take out his or her red pen, e.g., carminesmeared and woodsmoke. However, this author can write! I loved descriptive lines such as, "There's just somethin about him that makes your skin crawl, like turnin over a rotten plank and seein one of them slick brown centipedes." Humor peppered in the novel helped tamper down the suspense. For example, when he asked for directions from the owner of a woods-encroached shack, the resident responds, "If one way comes here and it don't go but two ways, then the other way must be the one you want." I also picked up homage to other works of literature. When Tyler is exiting the Harrikin, he walks through an arch which reminded me of Dante's travels through Hell. During Tyler's time in the Harrikin, the personification of pure evil is close on his tail. Like Dante in Divine Comedy, Tyler achieves personal growth and knowledge from the characters he encounters along the way. I highly recommend this book to any college English literature teacher, especially those teaching courses on Southern literature. Thanks to the Goodreads members that introduced me to this Southern Gothic author.

[michdubb · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A short book that seemed long. The undertaker was an interesting character that was mostly ignored through the middle section of the book. The Tyler character comes across interesting characters during his seemingly endless trek through the woods but these characters are quickly abandoned.

[bookson23rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A creepy Southern Gothic tale involving young children, old men, and dead bodies. Some necrophilia throw in as well. Gay writes wonderfully; gorgeous poetic sentences add to the color of this book.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well, this wasn't what I thought I was getting, apart from being set in the Deep South. Intriguing, disturbing, darkly comical in places, yet slow and ponderous, Twilight - which I feel should have the subtitle, 'No, not that one' - is a sort of modern day Grimm's fairy tale told in the style of No Country for Old Men. I can understand the unfavourable comparisons with other authors that previous reviewers have made - Flannery O'Connor could have told this tale better with half the words - but the gothic overtones and violence really suggest the style of McCarthy and O'Connor combined. That said, I was far from captivated, and struggled to pay attention to the loops of the plot, like the family found in the prologue. A clever attempt, nonetheless.

[jarratt_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Got halfway through the book when I quit. The story was OK and the writing is very good, but dammit if I don't hate the arrogance of a writer who thinks it's OK to thwart standard punctuation rules and do away with quotation marks. I can't tell you how many times I had to re-read a paragraph because it was made up of dialogue, narration, then dialogue again. But of course, that wasn't obvious because there were no quotation marks. His scant use of commas was frustrating too.Also, Gay seems to enjoy putting words together to make a new word. "Cartire" is an example of this. I first read the word as "car" "ti" "ree" before I realized he meant car tire. And this wasn't being used in dialogue to illustrate someone speaking quickly. It was just there as a part of exposition. Aggravating.All that said, the guy absolutely nails Southern dialect. And the core of the story might have been more impactful if it had moved at a bit quicker pace. But I suppose Gay so badly wants to be in the "literature" genre that he's got to add all this other imagery and fluff so as to slow down the plot.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1. Derivative. O?Connor and, especially, McCarthy are everywhere, but the prose lacks McCarthy?s flawless, tightly contained rhythm and O?Connor?s excellent pacing and characterizations. An imitation (which is undoubtedly too strong a word to use here, but I?m lazy) shouldn?t be dismissed out of hand, though, if the imitation is good, and in this case it is, unevenly and for the most part.
2. Often beautifully evocative, especially of the Southern wilds. The feel of them, while darkly distorted of course, is accurate. If you?ve spent a lot of time in them in reality you?ll recognize them immediately.
3. The book is highly impressionistic; the story is old as the hills (humans are the most dangerous of prey) and the characters are merely structures to hang the impressions on. Sound and color and style are most important to me in a book, so the lack of a good story or well-drawn characters doesn?t necessarily bother me; if you like them, though, you might not like Twilight.
4. Gay is at his best in brief descriptions (but he relies too much on previous writers to the point that I wondered if it was a purposeful half-parody), although his poetry is like a dry husk?handle it too much and it collapses in your hands. He?s also at his best with casual dialogue, which is sprinkled throughout.
5. The end of the book becomes annoying because there?s nothing below the chase even as Gay attempts to create purpose with broad strokes (death, identity, death, insanity, courage, more death). Worse, it takes an absurd turn; an absurdity that isn?t dark comedy but is just goofy?it?s jarring and incompatible with the tone Gay tried to set. A killer dresses in drag, disguised as an old grandmother (this may be a reference to either "Little Red Riding Hood" or, what seems more of a stretch, O?Connor?s grandmother in ?A Good Man is Hard to Find;? either way, or no way, it?s crudely handled); a nut careens in his hearse/sled through the snow with the lady corpse he loves so passionately. Dumb, or if not dumb, poorly done.
6. Started out as 4 stars, slid down to 3.

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In a rural Tennessee town in the 1950s, Fenton Breece, the local undertaker with ?a horror of people? that he controls by imagining them dead on his table, takes perverse pleasures with those he buries. The Tylers, a brother and sister, discover his long-suspected secret and attempt to blackmail Breece. Breece hires Granville Sutter, a man notorious for his viciousness and flouting of the law, to take care of the problem. The scene where Breece meets Sutter for the first time ? the two men in town most associated with death ? is morbidly hilarious.Kenneth Tyler takes to the untamed wilderness known as The Harriken, a place where sounds come from the earth like ?voices of the damned pleabargaining for their souls,? pursued by Sutter, who takes the job despite thinking of Breece as ?this mad quoter of poetry, nightmare minister to the dead so far beyond the pale light could never fall on him.?Gay?s writing is perpetually lively, never uninteresting. His characters, particularly Sutter and Breece, are pungent and matchless. As Gay says, ?it is true this world holds mysteries you do not want to know.? William Gay attempts to discern these mysteries, and then proceeds to reveal them.

[bookmarque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having only read a bit of Flannery O’Connor and none of Cormac McCarthy, I can’t comment on any similarity between their work and this. Reviews of Twilight often mention those two and sometimes the comparison doesn’t go Gay’s way, but I was absolutely gobsmacked by the language in this book. Often when I’m starting a book by a new writer, I’ll read it out loud. This is a great way for me to get the rhythm and cadence of the language down, plus it’s kind of fun. Almost never before have I fallen into an accent so naturally as with this book. It’s set in Tennessee and the drawl just came out. It was surprising and even when I was reading silently it was there in my head natural as anything.Another thing people mention a lot in reviews is the lack of quotation marks for dialogue. Stylistically I think Gay may have done it to place his prose in an even more stark environment; literally stripping the page bare except for his words. Once I got used to it, I could manage it fine although occasionally it took a second reading to figure out if it was a character’s thought or speech. Now, I said I haven’t read McCarthy and I hear he’s created some doozies for villains. And that they and their actions are as nakedly cruel as any in literature. No punches pulled no holds barred. If that’s true, Gay has created a couple that come pretty close. Sutter is about the best portrait of evil as I’ve ever read. He’s relentless and calculating and frightens everyone so much that he gets away with murders. Yeah, plural. He says offhand to someone “Who knows, I may even let you walk again. That ain’t out of my reach.” Not much on its own, but as part of the whole it sums up his attitude well. Breece was a sickening creature in his own way, but his violations were only visited upon the dead. In the end, the villagers came for him just as Corrie predicted, though not before Sutter delivers her to Breece which was just heartbreaking.There is a place where the prologue and the main narrative hitch together and I have to say that one sentence filled me with dread like hardly any writer has been able to do. I actually put the book down for a day. Knowing what would befall the people I’d just met was too much. “They were aligned against the wall like spectators at some perverse bloodsport that had gotten out of hand and when he advanced toward them with the dripping knife he moved upon a wall of stricken eyes.” Luckily, that’s as close as we get to the violence. The lack of detail shows some faith in the reader that the imagination can be a more powerful tool. Sometimes the wording is a little dense, with multiple descriptors and clauses per sentence, but it flowed well and helped with the thick, musty atmosphere of a town held in terror and the overarching menace of Breece and Sutter. The supporting characters, while fairly stock, were useful and amusing. I won’t say the denouement was surprising. Tyler ended up back at a place I was hoping he’d get back to. It seemed perfect for laying a trap. The chase is a bit drawn out and interrupted by scenes with Breece, but overall it worked well with only one major gaffe that I can’t believe would work in real life. Other than that though, I was moved by this book and won’t forget it anytime soon. Maybe if you’re a fan of McCarthy and O’Connor, Twilight won’t give you anything new. If you’re like me though and haven’t read either, it might work for you as an example of a southern gothic tale of the blackest of hearts and one person who fought against it.

[librarycin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.5 stars When teenage siblings, Corrie and Tyler (actually, Kenneth – Tyler is their last name), suspect something odd about the town undertaker (Breece), they dig up their father's grave (and a few others) to find he wasn't buried in the casket they paid for – and they noticed the others they dug up had been buried oddly. They decide to blackmail Breece with photos they found, but instead, Breece hires a killer to get those photos back. I thought the plot sounded interesting. However, it didn't turn out that way for me. It really bothered me (especially at first) that there were no quotation marks used for dialogue. At times, I wasn't sure if someone was actually speaking or simply thinking something. I also didn't like that so many characters were referred to by their last names, which means the reader has to keep track of first AND last names so as not to think they are two different people, in case they are occasionally referred to by their first name. There were also a lot of overly descriptive passages, which I'm not always a fan of. This all sounds like I hated it. I didn't hate it. There were parts of the book that were ok and held my interest, but there were too many aspects of the book that bothered me, and I did often lose interest in what I was reading.