The Name of the Nearest River

Starred review from February 15, 2010
This debut collection pulls readers into rural Kentucky and hammers them with the despair and frustration that drive his fierce, battered denizens of the Bluegrass State: coal thieves, demolition derby drivers, punk teens, and “tavern-brave” hicks, all aiming to break off a tiny slice of the world. In the title story, two men go looking for the drowned body of a man to settle a score with the drowned man's corpse. “The Evening Part of Daylight” also shatters the sacred when an offended groom punches his bride in the face and then has to deal with the angry masses, while in “Winter in the Blood,” a pair of cattle killers embody the senselessness of murder. Taylor's command over his characters is as remarkable as his sharp, evocative prose. The bleak Kentucky landscape is drawn in grays and browns with an unforgiving yet loving eye; the descriptions of the countryside alone make Taylor's stories worth digging into, but with his characters and all of their petty grievances and desperate hopes, this first-time author inspires a mix of wonder, love, and pity for his sick, sad characters.

February 15, 2010
In his debut story collection, Taylor beckons the reader into the hollers of Kentucky, with its "old sunken highways" and its "smell of tobacco smoke and damp bark and dirt." His characters are often "maligned and bereft," like the six sons of Clay Gaither encamped across from the Sinking Star Drive-in who are sustained by government cheese and cotton candy from the movie concession ("Equator Joe's Famous Nuclear Meltdown Chili") or the tattooed brothers who catch "huge, grizzle-bear catfish, whiskery with age" ("A Lakeside Penitence") with their bare handsthey call it "noodling." Stirred and distracted by love, they may erupt into violent acts that take even themselves by surprise, not to mention the reader. That's what happens to Lustus Sheetmire in "The Evening Part of Daylight," who punches his new bride Loreesa in the jaw on their wedding dayand that's only in the first sentence. VERDICT With their precise sensory detail and dark humor, these memorable stories bring to mind Flannery O'Connor and the promise of an exciting literary career.Sue Russell, Thomas Jefferson Univ., Philadelphia

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2010
Taylor blends all the essential ingredients of classic Southern fictionbeer, fishing, guns, cars, and moral and social restlessnesstogether in his first collection, 11 stories of revenge, violence, impossible love, and true heartache. His hard-drinking, dogged Kentuckians have little and desire less, yet find themselves losing their dignity to those who seem to possess more. Two surly brothers, late for their aunts funeral (and without a gift), snag a prize catfish with their bare hands, only to have it stolen by a smug man with a jet ski and a pretty girl. A group of lonesome men, who regularly meet for a cathartic, makeshift demolition derby, lose their bearings when a woman driving her husbands Mustang interrupts them. And a band of vengeful American colonists on a manhunt are betrayed by a silver-tongued Tory while the outlaw hides in a cave. Taylors voice is sure and raw, truly and comically Southern in the best sense of the word, and these spirited tales are a fine addition to the Souths long and celebrated storytelling tradition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)