Under the dog star

J. Caldwell

Propelled by misguided sexuality, this understated novel exerts a strong and often unpleasant grip. After Andy Durant is killed while robbing a gas station, his wife Grady collects their three children, Peter, Anne and Martha, and moves back to the farm where she was raised. All four Durants pivot around Royal Provo, a seventeen-year-old grease-monkey orphan worshipped by Peter and despised by Anne, who sleeps with him nonetheless. As the summer progresses, Grady imputes laughably complex motives to simple people and engages in a round-robin of rejection that claims at least one life. Later, the money stolen by Andy Durant surfaces to point an accusing finger at more than one of his brood.