A review by ben_miller
Winter in the Blood by James Welch
3.0
The dialogue is great; the descriptive writing a little more uneven, sometimes slipping into that dreaded vein known as "Bad Hemingway." (Something along these lines: The mountains were green. It was cold. I was fourteen then. The mountains were green and cold and we felt good.)
The story is slack, largely without tension or stakes, though a sense of hurt and emotional damage pervades it, lending some weight to the proceedings. I didn't mind the meandering plot, because individual scenes were handled so well. It didn't really feel like a novel, though, more like a 177 page short story. It has an impact at the end, but I'm not sure if it is as much as the author wanted.
The story is slack, largely without tension or stakes, though a sense of hurt and emotional damage pervades it, lending some weight to the proceedings. I didn't mind the meandering plot, because individual scenes were handled so well. It didn't really feel like a novel, though, more like a 177 page short story. It has an impact at the end, but I'm not sure if it is as much as the author wanted.