Saturday, May 23, 2015

something about Urban Waite's "The Terror of Living"


Urban Waite debuts with The Terror of Living: A Novel, a story of a chase sparked by greed, desperation, cruelty, and chance. The Terror of Living resembles Cormac McCarthy's 1997 hit, No Country for Old Men. So much so that I found Waite's rendition a little tedious. Waite's dialect-saturated narrative relies on a calculated use of demonstrative pronouns to achieve rural down-home authenticity; it all rang false for me. Waite has been recognized for this novel and another titled The Carrion Birds. Here he just simulates the McCarthy experience badly.