God's Country Paperback – 15 May 2003

Percival Everett writes books that never disappoint. His work is dynamic, special, and you never quite know what he is going to do next. This is a Western, but like no other Western you have ever read. It is funny, irreverent and enormously entertaining. Curt Marder draws back and watches as his homestead burns down, his wife is abducted and his dog is killed by an arrow. Hiring a sardonic tracker Bubba, a black man in a hostile world, he sets out to follow the abductors and set his world to rights. He's hardly the typical hero being a coward, a bigot and a racist, but the wit and humour of his dilemma is mercilessly exploited in this marvellous book which takes in a cross-dressing General Custer, betrayal and burial up to the neck of a man and his horse, and a cornucopia of characters who are as beautifully imagined and surprising as any you've come across before. The book is a satire on the cowpoke history of America, fizzing with humour as well as a blazingly accurate send up of the history of a certain phase of American life. This is the frontier and all the usual stereotypes make an appearance, along with some very adventurous creations. If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd want to claim this novel as his own. I am a great fan of Percival Everett's books. He's a black-American writer with an impeccable pedigree of highly intelligent and riotously imaginative books and this is the Western made alive again by a man with a prodigious talent.

Percival Everett's 'God's Country' is a witty romp-ride with pins in the saddle. Narrated by good-for-nothing, talentless, sympathy-seeking, backstabbing, gambler/pioneer Curt (Dirt) Marder, it begins and ends with violence. Between those two acts, one in which Curt is the 'victim' and the other in which he is the perpetrator, the book manages to explore the ideals, hopes, dreams and faults of America. Complete with treacherous trails and terrain, barely comprehensible fools, villains, good-time girls, an ambitious, raw-meat-eating Colonel Custer and 'a man who looked a year older than God,' the land is as epic as the people are small - sometimes, small-minded.There is an element of allegory in the tale if you consider orphaned-by-outlaws boy/girl Jake as America, with Bubba, a free black tracker, a camp of Indians, and a professional whore, Loretta, trying to save her from a preacher/bootlegged-alcohol salesman, Phrensie, who intend to sell her to a pimp. There is also a lovely vignette echo of the Good Samaritan when feckless narrator, Curt, is buried up to his neck in the desert by boys (in his words "stinking beaver turds") and then left for dead by an ageing pioneer and an elixir salesman (who is Jewish, in a reversal of the biblical parable), but saved by a turncoat Indian brave.Essentially, 'God's Country' is a trip from point A to B, but on the way it illustrates the lawlessness that America - in its pursuit of capitalist goals - never seems very far from. It reminded me a little bit of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's  Wizard of the Crow , a tale set in an equally epic unnamed African country and powered by greed. A mighty entertaining read - fun and thought-provoking.

I am not a fan of modern fiction generally - I find most novels written in the last 20 years fail utterly to move me in the way that older, genuine works of art have done. These days publishers seem fit to lionise mere collections of dialogue with weak characterisations and even weaker plots and I leave these works disappointed, feeling that the author has little interesting and meaningful to say.Percival Everett is beginning to restore my faith in the modern novel. After reading 'Erasure' and the more recent 'American Desert' - novels that are at once tragedies, comedies and searing indictments of modern American values - I feel confident that the spirit of Rabelais (and perhaps Mark Twain) is alive again!Annoyingly, however, most of Mr Everett's works (15 novels, 2 collections, 1 childrens book) are unavailable this side of the pond so it is ridiculously difficult to explore his back catalogue. Thanks to Amazon Marketplace I have begun that journey with 'Gods Country' and - while it is an earlier and less confident work that 'Erasure' - it did not disappoint.'Gods Country' is a kind of road movie set in the Wild West. It is the story of a less-than-perfect cowboy who sets out to avenge the killing of his dog (and the not quite so important kidnapping of his wife) by unidentified thugs. He is assisted in this task by a smart-mouthed black tracker (Bubba) and a troublesome child (Jake) who insists on tagging along. Thus begins a picaresque journey into 1870s America, warts and all - a sort of literary 'Deadwood' in which prospecters, hookers, less than Godly preachers and army officers compete for wealth and glory while the Injuns and former slaves look on bemused.In short this hugely entertaining novel succeeds both in being very funny as well as in asking some uncomfortable questions about the attitudes of the 'heroes' of the West.(A final thought: it occurs to me that it would make a great film or TV movie! Prospective film-makers out there, please take note!)

Haven't read this but bought as a present as I loved his writing