Hold The Dark is one of the few books I've read that I classify as "riveting." Medora Slone, a young mother in a small Alaskan village, contacts, wolf expert Russell Core to say that a wolves have killed and dragged away her son. She implores him to come up from the Lower 48 and find them and her sons bones. Core does and discovers that in these isolated villages where people have survived for generations against and with the over sized brutality of the winters, that nothing is as it seems. Giraldi's writing is tight and poetic with no word wasted and many words a thousand images. Justice among men is as indiscriminate as the unforgiving land in which they live. It's a short book but lasted long because I read it slowly. I reread sentences and passages, ingesting the images and letting them swell with the author's intentions. I kept thinking of Jim Harrison as I read Hold The Dark, and I mean that as the highest compliment. So I heard this guy speak at the Boston Book Festival and he's a little pretentious. He says it sometimes takes him a day to write a sentence. As I was reading I couldn't help but think...yeah I could see that. His disdain for clichés sometimes make his descriptions a little absurd if you ask me...like he's trying just a TAD too hard. You'll see what I mean if you read it.As for the story...it's not forgettable. He seems to like to NOT prepare you for what's coming next. You're reading along and then BAM! something happens and by something I don't mean a bird flies out of a tree...I mean a mass of locusts covers the village! It's rather startling but not unpleasant. It's a quick read that won't disappoint. As for William Giraldi becoming the next James Joyce, well I don't know about that...
Brutal, disturbing, beautiful writing, the Alaskan wilderness its own character.
—Tams81
This book is VERY dark. Murder, incest, war, Alaska. Allin a mere 200 pages.
—Dona
Very well and at times poetically written, but bleak. So bleak.
—kiera
very dark but awesome writing!
—Dylareus
