With.

With is a novel by Donald Harrington that I had the privilege of reading over my  gloriously chaotic holiday break. I am so astounded by his creativity. It blew my mind. 

Donald Harrington is from Little Rock and grew up with family scattered all over the Ozarks. He lost his hearing to Meningitis at age 12 and he taught art history at various universities including University of Arkansas for decades. He’s written at least a dozen books basically all taking place in and around the Ozarks, which is pretty rare and fantastic. So there are seventy-four reasons why I was already inclined to like him.

AND THEN. and then. I read this book. Myyyy gosh. (Are all of these fragments relaying to you the speechlessness that I feel? I hope so). I mean, he is sincerely brilliant and, as I said before, so amazingly creative with his characters, his narration, his literary devices… really everything. I will say that you definitely have to have an affinity for the strange and the out-of-the-box to thoroughly enjoy this book and that, while truly amazing, it is not a fast-paced, gripping read. It moves slow and intricately weaves, but my brain is still reeling. It is a genre-defying masterpiece. And it absolutely increased my already existent hope that I will someday have a cabin in the Ozarks.  

I will leave you with a review that I found fitting from the back of the book:

“Harrington has succeeded in creating one of the finest novels in recent years. It is myth; it is tall tale; it is bawdy story; it is Americana; it is literature.”