Paul's Reviews > The Long Home

They drove through a land in ruin, a sprawling, unkept wood of thousands of acres, land bought by distant companies or folks who'd never seen it. Yet they passed unlit houses and old tilting grocery stores with their rusting gaspumps attendant and it was like driving through a country where civilization had fallen and vanished, where the gods had turned vengeful or perverse so that the denizens had picked up their lives and fled. Old canted oblique shanties built without regard for roads or the uses of them, folks for whom footpaths would serve as well. Dark bulks rising out of the mouths of hollows, trees growing through their outraged roofs. Old stone flues standing blackened and solitary like sentries frozen at their posts waiting for a relief that did not come and did not come. Longdeserted ghostroads, haunts of homeless drunks and haphazard lovers.

Sadly this completes my reading of William Gay's all too few publications, other than his collection of short stories.

The Long Home was Gay's debut, but it's like his genius for lyrical prose came into the world fully formed and perfect. The above extract could have been lifted from just about any page. I chose this one because even the description of his bleak, abandoned neighbourhood of miner's homes is beautiful. What a shame William Gay's output was so small. Fortunate for many loyal and admiring fans however. Better his small output than none. William Gay published this book in 1999, when he was in his late fifties, wrote three more books and a collection of short stories and died thirteen years later in 2012.
Really i can't recommend this novel (and all Gay's books) more highly.
Just fantastic!!