A review by some_okie_dude27
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto

Like many others, I was introduced to Nic Pizzolatto through his work on the first season of True Detective, which I still hold to be one of the finest seasons of television ever aired on the small screen. If ever there were such a thing as a novel on television, True Detective's first season would be it...well without being The Wire of course. Alongside Charlie Kaufman, I would say that Nic Pizzolatto is the most literary screenwriter working today.

Pizzolatto's prose is tight and controlled. Beautiful without being overtly purple or verbose and dripping with the white trash southern gothic atmosphere that has permeated some of his other work. The prose also has the punch that the best of noir has, and Pizzolatto gives the language a lush touch, even if its light in its poeticism. Pizzolatto proves to be as gifted in prose as he is for the screen.

Unlike True Detective, Galveston proves to be a much more intimate tale. My friend Jason told me when recommending this book that this felt like a blueprint for what Pizzolatto would eventually cover in True Detective (one of the main characters shares a habit with Rust on True Detective, for instance.) Sadly, there aren't any drunk police officers ranting about how time is a flat circle or any cosmic horror elements in this novel. But it proves to be peak noir at its best: melancholic, dark, and brooding.

But with that, there also comes a lot of emotion in this novel, particularly with the leads Roy Cady and the prostitute Rocky. Galveston seems much more interested in what binds people together and what connects us with each other, even when it comes to people who are as deeply flawed as they are. Pizzolatto succeeds at the art of characters self-destructing and how their flaws end up alienating the people who they care about. Cady is yet another beer guzzling philosopher who lives on the edge, but proves to be full of surprising insights and thoughts about regret, the past, and death.

Another theme of the novel that I picked up is the art of storytelling itself. Much like Rust in True Detective, words prove to be Roy's defense mechanism against the world around him and prevent him from confronting his feelings about his life and the line of work that he has found himself in. But by the end of the story, it's storytelling that manages to give Roy the much needed catharsis and redemption that he so craves, and Pizzolatto explores this theme with subtlety and tact.

The set up of the story is familiar, with the hitman with a heart finding redemption by forming a relationship with a scrappy hooker with a heart of gold, but Pizzolatto creates a twist on the story that makes it a much more heartbreaking and poignant ending than I initially suspected it would be, and it's an ending that proves to be touching in its own way. It was ultimately the ending that made the book excellent in my eyes, and ultimately what caused me to really enjoy it by the end.

Pizzolatto's heart seems to be with screenwriting at the moment, though I have seen him say that he isn't against writing another novel (he can't afford it at this time, he says.) I know that I, for one, eagerly await for whenever he decides to add another novel to his oeuvre.