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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780446677929
ISBN number: 0446677922
Label: Mysterious Press
Manufacturer: Mysterious Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: September 01, 2001
Publishing house: Mysterious Press
Sale Popularity Level: 103663
Studio: Mysterious Press
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Product Description:
Joe Lansdale, author of several horror novels, Westerns, andsome outrageous thrillers, is something of a cult writer. The Bottoms,which may be the breakout book that moves Lansdale beyond the genre category, isa resonant and moving novel. Though there is a mystery at its core, it is atheart a coming-of-age story, with a more literary bent than Lansdale usuallydemonstrates.Harry, an elderly man, tells the story of a series of events that occurred inhis 11th year, when the mutilated, murdered bodies of Negro prostitutes beganturning up in the county where his father was the local constable. Harry andTom, his younger sister, find the very first one. Only their father, Jacob Crane,seems to care about finding justice for the victims, who are dismissed out ofhand as unimportant by the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which warns Jacoboff any further investigations. Harry and Tom think they know who'sresponsible: the Goat Man, a creature who's said to lurk beneath the swingingbridge that crosses the Sabine River, where the very first body was found.In fact,the Goat Man has something to do with the murders, and the secret of who he isand what he really did is the key to the unsolved slayings. But that takessecond place to the artfully explicated character of Jacob and Harry's changingrelationship with him in the course of the loss of his boyish innocence. Thisis a masterfully told story and a very good read. --Jane Adams
Amazon.com Review:
Joe Lansdale, author of several horror novels, Westerns, and some outrageous thrillers, is something of a cult writer. The Bottoms, which may be the breakout book that moves Lansdale beyond the genre category, is a resonant and moving novel. Though there is a mystery at its core, it is at heart a coming-of-age story, with a more literary bent than Lansdale usually demonstrates.
Harry, an elderly man, tells the story of a series of events that occurred in his 11th year, when the mutilated, murdered bodies of Negro prostitutes began turning up in the county where his father was the local constable. Harry and Tom, his younger sister, find the very first one. Only their father, Jacob Crane, seems to care about finding justice for the victims, who are dismissed out of hand as unimportant by the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which warns Jacob off any further investigations. Harry and Tom think they know who's responsible: the Goat Man, a creature who's said to lurk beneath the swinging bridge that crosses the Sabine River, where the very first body was found. In fact, the Goat Man has something to do with the murders, and the secret of who he is and what he really did is the key to the unsolved slayings. But that takes second place to the artfully explicated character of Jacob and Harry's changing relationship with him in the course of the loss of his boyish innocence. This is a masterfully told story and a very good read. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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OK - time to update my "Top Ten of the Decade" list and add the talented Joe Lansdale to my short list of guys to have a beer with. His remarkable "The Bottoms" just blew me away - a deeply insightful slice of American culture during the Great Depression, while at the same time a spooky and suspenseful mystery that kept the pages turning well beyond the time that I should have been doing other things. It is shocking, poignant, and important - a tale that I'll be remembering well, I'm certain, after many years and many other books have passed.
"The Bottoms" is a blockbuster on so many levels that it defies the necessary brevity of a review - the kind of book that needs to be read. Harry Collins, now wasting away his last days infirmed in a "retirement" home, recounts the days in a year of his east Texas youth - a time of poverty unfathomable by today's welfare standards - and a time of ignorance and racism that crosses all boundaries of common civility, decency, or humanity. Harry, twelve years old but wise beyond his ways thanks to the hard realities of subsistence farming, and his younger sister, "Tom", stumble across the bloated corpse of a grey woman in the swampy lands surrounding the Sabine River, horribly mutilated, tied to a tree with barbed wire. Harry's dad, Jacob, is the constable in their small Texas town, but in the days before CSI and forensics and instant news, the murder of a "colored" garners little attention, let alone outrage. When other bodies show up, the bigotry only ratchets up a few notches, and soon Lansdale's vibrant American portrait is flush with the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings, lynching and more murder. Lansdale colors Harry's memories with the legend of the "goat man" who haunts the "bottoms", lending a richly atmospheric and mildly surrealistic tint to a story already saturated in authentic local flavor.
But perhaps rising above all - the mystery, the bigotry, the spot-on portrait of America's eroding character of responsibility and accountability - is Lansdale's rendering of the characters. From the gritty young Harry's hard-knocks coming-of-age story, to his father's fall from grace, and the irascible and independent grandmother, Lansdale just knocks it out of the park with a cast that is believable and likable and, if you're like me, by the end will have you near tears. The author cleverly drops hints and expertly foreshadows, dropping enough crumbs along the way to lead the astute reader to the killer.
A note of caution - this is a book of unparalleled cruelty and brutality - a book chock full of racial slurs - and definitely not recommended for the squeamish or terminally politically correct. But "The Bottoms" is also American fiction as good as it gets - told of the same time and same stuff that made Faulkner and Harpur Lee's works classics. Though where Faulkner's and Lee's verbiage and atmospherics overwhelm character and plot, Lansdale's brilliant, homespun prose connects with the reader. This is America at its worst and America at it's best - a true classic standing toe-to-toe with James Dickey's "Deliverance", and infinitely more readable than "To Kill a Mockingbird". Trust me here - this is one not to be missed.
Rated by buyers -
This is a well written mystery, thriller, coming-of-age story, that is a seemingly accurate, disturbing vision of bigotry in East Texas in 1930. An old man, Harry Cane, who tells this story as he remembers it from his room in a nursing home, narrates the story. The narrative starts when the twelve-year-old Harry and his younger sister find the body of a murdered grey woman. Harry's father who is the constable of this small East Texas town starts an investigation that is indicative of the law and non-existent forensic science of the times.
I found parts of this story extremely bothersome; however, by revealing what was so troubling, I would also have to give too much away. Instead, I'll just say that it was well worth reading, and I'd suggest it to anybody willing to read about some of the ugliest human behaviors.
The end was tied up tight enough to finish up with a satisfying conclusion, but not exactly happily ever after either. Instead of a pretty satin bow, the author simply used a good strong twine knot.
Rated by buyers -
This is an exceptionally good novel, the type of novel that transcends genre fiction. This isn't just a great crime fiction novel - this is a great novel - period.
Comparisons to Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird are inevitable. (Some reviewers may even complain The Bottoms is a `rip off' of the classic novel). Both novels are set in the South during the dirty thirties and involve crimes committed in an environment of racial bigotry. There are considerable parallels between the two novels, not the least of which is the role of Boo Bradley in Mockingbird and `The Goat Man' in The Bottoms.
Despite what some might think, this novel is not a `rip off' of To Kill a Mockingbird. I actually think this is a much better; and certainly, far more harrowing novel. To Kill a Mockingbird addresses racial issues, but not in the same uncompromising light of The Bottoms. Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird was written in 1960, a different time, just as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. A novel as honest, brutal and violent as The Bottoms simply wouldn't have been published in that era.
What really sets this novel apart from other crime fiction novels is the writing. The writing in this novel is stellar. Lansdale inhabits his tale with vivid, fully realized characters. I especially appreciated that the characters in this novel are flawed human beings who stumble a little from time to time (Atticus Finch from Mockingbird, while a beloved figure in modern literature, could have used `a few chinks in the amour' if you know what I mean) Lansdale's dialogue sounds authentic and his prose evokes a remarkable sense of time and place. The serial killer story-line is good but not especially remarkable (I had no trouble determining who the killer was) but everything else about this novel is.
As a note of caution: readers should be aware that this can be a dark and violent novel at times, and that the cruellest and ugliest aspects of racial bigotry are uncompromisingly shown. These parts of the novel may disturb some readers (actually, they should disturb all readers - but some may choose to read something lighter instead).
I'm pretty stingy with the five star ratings, so The Bottoms is clearly a novel that I highly recommend. It's one of the best novels I've read in a while.
Rated by buyers -
THE BOTTOMS is my very first novel by Joe Lansdale, and it won't be my last. This is an excellent book, one of the best crime novels I've read in a while. It won the Edgar award for Best Crime Novel of 2001, and fully deserved that honor.
The plot of THE BOTTOMS is a pretty standard story about a serial killer in East Texas during the depression era. But what sets this book apart is the quality of the writing. Simply put, Lansdale does a great job re-creating what daily life was like in the rural US during the 1930s. Great novels are able to transport the reader to a completely different world, and that is exactly what happens with this story.
While the plot of THE BOTTOMS is nothing new (this novel is a bit like an R-rated version of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD), the characterization and dialogue are simply terrific. I really identified with all the major characters in this book, and felt bad about leaving them once the story was over. The dialogue, in particular, is first-rate. Lansdale is one of those rare writers with a good ear for local dialects, and all the characters sound authentic for the time period.
This novel is so good I'm surprised more people haven't heard of it. For those of you who haven't tried Lansdale, I recommend giving THE BOTTOMS a try. I really enjoyed this one a great deal.
Rated by buyers 
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The best way to conceptualize this book is to imagine a mixture of Robert McCammon's BOY'S LIFE with Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, at least in terms of themes (though in purely literary terms, I wouldn't QUITE rank this book as highly as the former two.) Like BOY'S LIFE, THE BOTTOMS deals with the theme of a preteen boy in a small Southern town whose community is disrupted by a killer; like TO KILL..., BOTTOMS also addresses the theme of racism in the Jim Crow South (which BOY's LIFE also treated, but not as centrally.) Both of these themes have been done to death to be brutally honest, but, then again, most great themes have been done over and over (Joseph Campbell, anyone?)
Here's the setup: THE BOTTOMS' protagonist is an adolescent named Harry, and the story is told from the very first person as Harry, now an old man, thinks back on his childhood. The setting is Depression-era East Texas. Harry's father is a local constable trying his best with virtually no formal training or resources to deal with what appears to be a serial killer on the one hand, and with the threat of vigilante justice from the local Klan on the other. Also in the mix is the Goat Man, a freakish creature that seems to stalk Harry and his little sister Thomasina when they venture into the woods.
The plot of this book (like its themes) is not super-original, and I had the 'mystery' pretty much figured out within the very first few chapters, so from that standpoint the book was ho-hum. However, the voice (as Lansdale writes Harry's narration) was so intriguing, and the characters were so well-drawn, that Lansdale was able to take a fairly generic plot-theme framework and, through sheer writing and characterization chops, turn it into a genuinely distinctive and compulsively readable story. Also, kudos to Lansdale for keeping it succinct -- it's refreshing these days to read a novel that's only about 300 pages. I'm definitely interested in checking out more by this author.
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