digital audio
English language
Published May 25, 2011 by Blackstone Audio.
Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's re-imagining of the legend of E. J. Watson, the Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw of the wild Florida frontier. Vividly capturing the American hinterlands at the turn of the twentieth century, it traces the story of Watson through eyewitness perspectives as he drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him. Originally written as three separate, acclaimed novels, Shadow Country is Matthiessen's bold new distillation of his monumental work. Tightened and brilliantly rewritten throughout, he has collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters, achieving his original vision of the Watson trilogy.
Great story but plodding at times. The author did a great job evoking the time and place of life in the Everglades.
A strange sandwich. The first part is Cormac McCarthy excellent, I'd give four stars (only four because I didn't buy into the multiple voices fiction; they all sound a bit too much alike). The second part is plain awful, it's hard to believe it's even written by the same author. I had to fast-forward after the first 100 pages. The third part is solid but still too long even in this condensed version. A rating of 4-1-3 stars boils down to three stars overall. There is a separate, uncondensed version of part one that might be worth checking out, my recommendation would be to skip the rest even though I'm quite fond of the "multiple versions of the same story" concept.
