I thought the pairing of Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending and Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time in the first round of the Tournament of Books was odd enough that I should read them back to back, as the Tournament of Books judge will. After reading both, I’m not sure how anyone can seriously judge the two side by side. The two books couldn’t be more different.
The Sense of an Ending, as mentioned by kevinfromcanada and hungrylikethewoolf, is a book about memory and contemplation. It is a slim book, less than 200 pages, but it packs a lot of meaning in its small frame. It won the Man Booker Prize, so I guess that means it is properly literary and British all at once. The writing is technically excellent. What do I mean by that? I mean Barnes is obviously a master of language and narrative. The prose is precision crafted. It has to be to fit that much weight in a novella. All of that being said, I still felt that the book isn’t complete. It seems like a really well-written character study on the idea of the unreliable narrator, but I turned the last page and said, “Seriously? That’s it?” I enjoyed the book. I’m glad I read it. I just don’t think it lives up to the hype. I’m certainly in the minority.
If The Sense of an Ending is properly literary and British, The Devil All the Time is properly hard-boiled and hellish. I don’t know if that comparison works, but it’s the best I can do. I’ve described The Devil All the Time to friends in the following two ways:
- It’s brutal.
- It’s David Lynch meets Rob Zombie in West Virginia.
Pollock’s book takes the Southern Gothic to new and bizarre lows. The book is soaked through with violence and suffering. The characters are essentially a testament to the depravity of humankind- a man broken by war and loss, a serial killer, a statutory rapist preacher, a corrupt small town cop, and several lonely women who just go along with it all. I want to call the characters absurdly tragic, but as I was reading the book the national news reported that a man hit his two sons with a hatchet and set their trailer on fire killing them all in a murder-suicide. That would fit in this book. Pollock offers the reader a little twisted humor here and there. He has a superb sense of timing and lets the reader come up for air right before it all gets to be too much, but he has no mercy for his characters. What’s disconcerting is that the book is engrossing. You want to know what happens to these people, although you don’t care if it’s something terrible. In some cases you may want something terrible to happen to them. On top of all of that, Pollock’s prose captures each disturbing scene perfectly. There’s a sinewy beauty to it.
How do you judge those two books against one another in the Tournament of Books? Emma Straub is the judge. She has a Tumblr full of nice, cuddly things. I’m guessing The Devil All the Time doesn’t have a chance. The Sense of an Ending is certainly the more literary book, but The Devil All the Time is the more creative and daring. The Sense of an Ending is heavy with the idea of how we remember our lives and how we come to terms with how we behaved. It is more concise and personal. The Devil All the Time is heavy with the idea of how humankind desperately wants and needs redemption from our unyielding depravity. It is bigger, messy, and abstract. The Sense of an Ending is a book award type of book. The Devil All the Time isn’t, but I think I will remember it longer.
