Did Joe R. Lansdale have Peter Dinklage in mind when he wrote the character Shorty’s look, or was I projecting? Maybe a bit of one, a lot of the other.
You see, the novel, The Thicket, only came to be on my TBR list because I had seen the movie starring Dinklage. I won’t go into that too much, but will say it is not a horrible movie as it had its moments, and I had fun picking apart those, “You did that?” scenes. But the main thing is that it got me to wondering how close the book and movie are. I already knew that the main villain had a major change, so what else was different? Because, let’s face it, most of the time the only connection is that the title is the same and maybe a few characters are similar.
Honestly though, they did keep to the spirit of this modern day western, if not all the details. The plot is simple enough: A set of siblings are orphaned. In the process of leaving town (with their grandfather) to live with an aunt, they run into criminals. The grandfather is killed, the ferry they are on is damaged in a storm, the girl (a pretty, young teen) is kidnapped by the big bads and taken away. Her slightly older, naive brother decides he’s going to get her back. He doesn’t know how, but you know, when did that ever stop anyone? He meets up with a man who is the son of an ex-slave, a dwarf bounty hunter and later on, a lady of the “if anyone has four bits to pay for it” career. Others will join, but regardless, our main group form an unlikely group and off they go. Into the Wilderness. The Thicket.
The writing is two fold. First, they make sure you know that the girl had “her flower used” (even if you don’t see it) and all sorts of euphemisms for that because she’s the criminal’s captive. The euphemisms for practically everything else are also used throughout and they are equally in over the top, flaunty language. It isn’t bad, it is just the tone set by the author, creating images and a slow paced mood. (The “drunk as a beaver at the bottom of the whiskey barrel was amusing though). The violence waffles between not so graphic to graphic. It is very much not shied away from and several times it is gratuitous. If you are squismish at all, walk on by. Of course there is language, racism, slurs, sex. The second part of the writing is that it is just dry. There is no emotion. Characters maim, torture, have sex and eat, sleep and use the privy like they are all just an every day event. The contradiction of literary elements in a matter-of-fact narrative voice is a bit off putting at times. Yet, it is easy to read and there were few to no places where I was unsure of the intent of the wording. It is straight forward. The novel is told from the perspective of the brother. The other big difference between the movie and the book is that we don’t see the villains and their point of view. This was a huge part of the movie, whereas in the book we only see the motley crew of bounty hunters/mercenaries/saviors.
When I started writing this review I was little over half way through it, so I didn’t know if two main plot points were the same. Due to that, and I wasn’t really sure how I feel about the book (other than my library copy needs to be updated as it smelled like really old book and was seriously stained). I never said, “Read it,” but I wasn’t saying don’t read, either. I was saying if you like westerns that are not PC (N word alert; the fat guy is Fatty, the dwarf is M word and, of course, Shorty, there is a young boy and a hog, Jimmie Sue our “fun time gal”, slop buckets used in not recommended ways) go for it. The movie is more PC so if you want to experience it, you might want to do that. Even though it still is violent, edgy and death isn’t shy about showing up.
Then I finished the book and came back to edit the review. I’m still saying read if you are into intense reads. A friend of mine did like his style of writing, but she had to stop due to his mature writing style. But I think you should know that, while I don’t know how close The Thicket and the author’s other works are, but Lansdale is also involved in the Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers / Bubba Ho-Tep world. So, that might be a draw or not.
