Matt Bondurant

I'm not rating this 1 star because Matt Bondurant is a bad writer. He's not. And I like that he wrote a novel based on the lives of his grandfather, two great-uncles and the family stories about them, as well as the local legends about their indestructibility, especially that of Forrest Bondurant. I picked this up on audio because I knew this was based on a true story that I found intriguing.

The reason I'm giving it 1 star is because I hated pretty much every minute of my work commute while I listened to this. It's sheer misery from start to finish, with no real bright points in the mundane, depressing, violent lives of the protagonists.

The focus is mostly on Jack Bondurant, the author's grandfather in real life, and as portrayed in the novel, the least interesting of the brothers. For a portrayal of his grandfather, it was decidedly unsentimental, even negative. I certainly didn't like him. I wish there had been more focus on Forrest. I suppose the author wanted to keep him mysterious, as maybe he was in life. I don't know, but his portions of the story were more interesting to me than any others. Keeping the focus on Jack was unconventional, which was maybe what the author was going for, but it didn't make for enjoyable reading (or listening, in my case).

I know a lot of people hated the jumps forward in time, where Sherwood Anderson was trying to track down a story on a famous female moonshiner and stumbled on the Bondurant story. I actually didn't mind these breaks. The author seems to be fascinated by Sherwood Anderson, and I wonder if I would understand why he wrote the book the way he did if I were well-versed in the writing of Sherwood Anderson. I suspect I would.

In the end, there was no romance, heroism or adventure in this story about a legendary trio of brothers who were moonshiners during Prohibition. I'm sure that was intentional, but darn it, it wasn't very fun.… (altro)