The Outlaw Album: Stories

by Daniel Woodrell

Hardcover, 2011

Status

Available

Publication

Little, Brown and Company, (2011)

Description

Twelve short stories depict people on the fringes of society, including an injured rapist who is cared for by a young girl and a husband who cruelly avenges the murder of his wife's pet.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Allizabeth
Description:
The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell is a set of 12 short stories describing "those on the fringes of society". These include a man who seeks revenge for the murder of his wife's dog; a girl who makes her rapist uncle pay for his sins, and a jealousy that could be deadly to a
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hitchhiker.

Review:
Being a fan of the film version of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone, I had a feeling I would enjoy a set of his "backwoods" short stories. Each of the twelve stories was chillingly realistic and gritty. I love the detail and the dialogue, especially in the most twisted tales, like in The Echo of Neighborly Bones. I also really like the cover art, it adds to the overall dark, twisted, and broken feel of the stories. My only complaint was that there weren't more stories since they were all between 7 and 28 pages each. I would recommend The Outlaw Album to anyone in the mood for some seriously unsettling and eerie stories of the "invisible" outlaws.

Rating: On the Run (4.5/5)

***I received this book from Little, Brown and Company (Hachette Book Group) in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
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LibraryThing member kraaivrouw
Daniel Woodrell became one of my favorite writers when I discovered Winter's Bone, a book that has a place in my top 10 favorite books. His stories are sly, brutally honest, removed from redneck stereotype - firmly rooted in a particular kind of reality. He also writes beautifully. Winter's Bone is
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a book that made me ache the first time I read and did so again after I finished it and read it all over a second time.

The Outlaw Album is a book of short stories - capsulized moments of revenge, of what can happen when people are pushed to the edge. It is strongly of its place - one that I know well from the time I spent living in Arkansas.

I spent a summer in college going out on the Little Rock library's bookmobile. Twice a week we sat in the big bookmobile in a suburban parking with lots of choice and air conditioning. The other two days we took the smaller bookmobile and drove back roads up into the Ouachita mountains - no air conditioning, but breathtaking beauty and patrons who brought us food from their gardens and homemade sausages. I can remember riding those roads through the woods with trees that formed a canopy over the road and wild roses growing in the trees that colored them all like a young girl's blush.

Daniel Woodrell gets the place and the people and its stories. His voice reminds me most of singers like Meredith Sisco or Levon Helm or early early Loretta Lynn or any of the people I've heard singing Appalachin folk songs and hymns at tent revivals, church, and bluegrass gatherings. The Outlaw Album isn't Winter's Bone, but it's still got that lonely soulful mountain feel and that's good enough.
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LibraryThing member BookishDame
Ozark deep woods stories that will both shock and amaze you with the intelligence and depth of Daniel Woodrell's writing. These stories are not to be missed! The are as gritty and raw as the Appalachia stories you may have heard of...only they're better. Woodrell has won too many awards to list for
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his writing abilities, but you'll know him best for his book to movie, "Winter's Bone," which won Academy Awards last year.

I highly recommend this small book. It's reminiscent of Falkner at his best.
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LibraryThing member MarcusH
This review is originally posted on LuxuryReading.com:

Daniel Woodrell’s The Outlaw Album is a collection of 12 short stories that offer a desolate investigation of individuals residing on society’s fringe. Woodrell’s tales explore themes centered on abuse, trauma, and the inability to outrun
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one’s past. The characters throughout do not represent feel good heroes or heroines, but those who struggle to cope with what their environment has provided for them. Throughout the collection Woodrell focuses on the grittiness of society. He explores many themes, which include the consequences of war, both past and present; and the effects of sexual abuse, poverty, and traumatic loss.
Woodrell makes no apologies for the actions of his characters. In “Uncle,” one of the more gritty and unrepentant stories in the collection, a young girl grows tired of her uncle’s sexual abuse. After being raped and witnessing other rapes performed by her uncle, the young girl violently and unremorsefully paralyzes the man with a pickaxe. She is then forced by her mother to tend to him. She embarks on a mission to make him suffer for his transgressions until eventually taking steps to enact her final revenge upon him.
Another pinnacle from the collection includes “Night Stand.” The story investigates the psychological damage both past and current wars create, as a young war veteran breaks into the home of a veteran from a past war. The story centers around the lack of understanding civilians have for soldiers either returning from war or those dealing with the trauma from past conflicts.
Woodrell does an amazing job of maintaining a connection to society’s dark and actively dismissed dilemmas. At points, however, his writing style slows to a painful crawl and becomes experimental and distracting. “The Horse in Our History” employs a writing style that at one moment relies on first hand oral transcriptions of an event and first person narration that tries to connect the past to the present. While interesting, the stylistic choice breaks the momentum created throughout the preceding stories and may distract the reader from noticing the story’s connection to the collection’s overall theme.
While all of the stories investigate a gritty truthfulness that we all would like to hide from, Woodrell’s meticulous attention to the psychology of his characters and their surrounding environment makes for a culturally significant addition to our literary heritage.
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LibraryThing member tloeffler
This is Daniel Woodrell's first collection of stories. As he does with his novels, he portrays the seedier side of Missouri Ozarks life, but in shorter segments, and he makes bad behavior almost justifiable . The short story format allows him to tell his stories from varying viewpoints, and he is
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definitely a storyteller. Each story has its own flavor and style, and you can hear his writing as you read. As he does in his novels, he doesn't always tell you what happens as much as he sets the stage and lets you figure it out on your own.

An amazing offering from an amazing writer.
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LibraryThing member eenerd
Interesting mix of short stories, based in various parts of Appalachia. Covers many topics, but mostly examines relationships between people, whether family or not. Some of the stories really shine, like the first one about a man who kills his neighbor over and over again in response to his wife's
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grief. Really amazing, really beautiful story and writing. There are several stories like that, but there are a few that are super-literary, which I found very difficult to get through--they were just way too abstract for my taste. The goods even out the bads here, for certain, which is one of the things I love about short story collections.
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LibraryThing member Sullywriter
Short stories set in the Ozarks. I especially enjoyed the first two, "The Echo of Neighborly Bones" and "Uncle." Vivid, taut and bleak.
LibraryThing member cait815
I am IN LOVE with the way this man writes.
LibraryThing member mjlivi
Harsh, dense stories of damaged, violent people in rural USA. I read it on a plane, which felt particularly disconnected from the weirdly timeless settings of these stories.
LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
I loved Winter's Bone (and found it very authentic). But--and I say this as someone who grew up about twenty minutes from where these stories are set--the characters in this book did not ring true to me. The writing is lovely, but I don't believe it.
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
The Outlaw Album is a collection of short stories by Daniel Woodrell and although I am a huge fan of this author, I would suggest that newcomers to his work start with one of his novels rather than this collection of inventive, gritty stories that are about tough characters who always choose the
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dark side. The stories pull no punches whether they are about murder, rape or revenge. His characters are mostly backwoods folk from the Ozarks familiar with drugs, liquor and guns and it is often impossible to find any redeeming or likeable qualities in them.

As with all short story collections, I preferred some stories over others but all are written in his hauntingly simple, heart-felt prose that paint vivid pictures of the Ozark countryside and the intense people he places there. The Outlaw Album is a book filled with tense stories, hard characters and brutal actions and I am happy to include this timeless, provocative collection on my shelf alongside his other works.
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LibraryThing member b.masonjudy
Rereading this collection I'm struck at Woodrell's flexibility with each narrative. From an oral history of a man's death and racial violence in "The Horse in Our History" to the intimate first-person of a girl who was sexually abused and gets her revenge in "Uncle." There is also no repetition of
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one narrator or voice and though not all the narratives are as compelling, particularly the closing piece "Returning to the River," the majority of this collection is an enjoyable and meticulously delivered set of short stories grounded in the landscape of Missouri.
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Language

Original language

English

Barcode

10320
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