Word: grubbs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (273 pp.]-Davis Grubb-Harper...
...Pearl Harper. And they have reason: their bank-robbing father is in Moundsville Prison waiting to be hanged. Before The Night of the Hunter has gone many pages, Ben Harper lives out the doggerel and swings for his crimes. The secret and, eventually, the terror around which Author Grubb's skin-prickling first novel unfolds is: What did Ben Harper do with the $10,000 in crisp, green 100s that he killed two bank clerks...
...time he woos and wins the widow Harper. John shows an animal distrust for this strange new father with the letters L-O-V-E tattooed on the fingers of his right hand and H-A-T-E on the left. Once the war of nerves is joined, Author Grubb piles horror on tension, chapter by chapter, till the Preacher meets an end as vicious as himself...
Terror, sensual love, and greed are the themes of the Night of the Hunter. But Grubb does not comment on them through his characters, they are merely components for good story-telling. Setting his characters in the Ohio River valley of West Virginia, he makes the great Ohio both a backdrop, and a kindly provider for the two helpless, terrified children that are his subjects...
...even with the stigma of a first novel, The Night of the Hunter cannot fail to be impressive. There is the local color of a Caldwell short story, and the sustained narrative of Galsworthy, both combined with the new, effective touch of Davis Grubb...