this book is a little bit of this:



and a lot of this:



okay, so it is much more of the latter than the former, but how often do i get to make x-files references in book reports?? not very often. this basically is a novel version of the events covered in the documentary, minus one brother. three brothers, closer than most and of feral intelligence and an array of undiagnosed conditions both mental and physical. they basically live beasts - crowded into one bed at night, urinating where they please - scraping together an existence primarily of survival, covered in manure - oblivious to the reactions of others to their aroma/behavior. they live a life whittled down to basic concerns food, avoiding doctors and townsfolk until one of them dies in the night, and the authorities descend to meddle where they are neither wanted nor understood.

the best thing about this book is the contrast. sure, in cormac mccarthyland, there are plenty of these characters, but the difference is, in his books, the characters are all varying degrees of these characters. in this book, we have their sister, who managed to get an education and leave the smothering family home to raise a family and have a career. but she is never ashamed of her brothers - there is a lovely scene of them attending her son's high school play after riding into town on their tractor, and trying to pay for the tickets with manure-encrusted cash. they are accepted as eccentrics without being patronized or attacked. they are just left alone, the way they want it.

until the death.

i books these because there is refreshingly little self-awareness. these characters do not spend any time whining about their petty problems and setbacks. this will never be an indulgent mumblecore independent movie where white people have problems and talk about them forever. these men are early man grunting but they love their family they handle their shit with their own two hands. and make creepy folk art.

this is one of my favorite passages that i advise dana to skip, but it tells about what happens when the oldest brother, vernon, suffers a farming accident where an old rusty spike from an antiquated piece of farm equipment shoots off and goes through his calf while his younger, possibly autistic, brother watches.

vernon had himself propped up on that harrow with his leg on the crossbar and he had a piece of angle iron in his one hand. he began to beat on that spike in his leg and audie was howling and he wouldn't let up. he beat on it and i hollered at him not to but he kept on, with audie on his knees and shaking and howling all the while. six or seven good blows and he drove that spike clear out the other side and it just fell down in the dirt and bounced once and laid there. audie kept shaking and howling and he wouldn't stop even though the spike was out and vernon was limping toward the stall. the leg of his pants was red and there was blood on his boot and blood on the floor soaking into the dirt and into the straw wherever he stepped. i told him he had to let a doctor see it but he said no. vernon'd never do anything you told him he had to do. that'd been his way since he was a boy. he shook out a feed bag and tore a strip off it and got him some baling twine and he rolled up that pant leg and wrapped the rag around where the spike had gone through and tied it off. a black hole on both sides, pumping. that's going to bleed, i told him, that's going to keep bleeding and you won't stop it that. you ought to at least put it up in the air, i said, but there were chores to be done and he shut his ears to me.

my dad's side of the family is very DIY. hmm, this house doesn't have a deck? i will build one. you want a gazebo?? here you go! my dad has a million stories about his grandfather making magic out of nothing but some spare lumber. this trait did not pass itself down to me, but i have a certain amount of appreciation for people this - who can just whip up something out of nothing - i am a huge fan of capable self-sufficiency.and i understand the need to do the chores that need to be done before tending to any personal physical discomfort. i nearly paralyzed myself when i decided that a back injury was not serious and allowed it to make me walk bent-over and unable to sit down for six months because i couldn't miss work. because i'm a heart surgeon, right?? because my job is sooooo important in the grand scheme of things. no one has ever taken a retail job more seriously than me, to my detriment. but i'm right there with you, vernon - you are my hero.

even though the things they make are more functional than aesthetic - these are people with no need for a gazebo - and everything is described as being a shamble-mess, i still admire native ingenuity.

this story is very fast paced, because it is told in alternating voices, skipping around in time with some chapters being only half a page long. there is much left implicit; the stories do not lock up perfectly a jigsaw puzzle, but it doesn't really matter, the story is stronger for the omissions.

big thumbs up for this one.

come to my blog!grit-lit115 s Sue1,302 572

At first I was not sure how I felt about this book. I felt almost a voyeur, uncomfortable and not enjoying the process of reading about the Proctor family and the apparent squalor of their farm life. As I continued to read, something happened. I found myself getting caught up in their lives and beginning to care about the brothers, to be angry at Tom and his father, upset with the troopers and glad there are good neighbors in this world. I guess Mr Clinch has written an effective novel for I was saddened when I turned the last page.

Addendum: After thinking more about this book, I realized that about a third of the way into it, I really was having emotional responses to these characters...they were people to me. Clinch had evoked a visceral response which is quite something for paper and ink. I'm thinking this probably is deserving of 5 stars now that I have thought more about the book and my complicated reaction to it.favorites library-book literary-fiction ...more19 s JonAuthor 8 books322

This ain't my review, folks. It's from the LA TIMES:

A Faulkneresque story of brotherly love and violence.

Kings of the Earth: A Novel, by Jon Clinch

Murder would seem to be a starkly defined crime. There's the killer, and the victim. The crime and the punishment. But within those relationships exists enough space to weave all manner of morality tales, which is what Jon Clinch has done with subtle brilliance in his novel "Kings of the Earth," which burrows into brotherly love and neighborliness and takes a determinedly unromantic look at rural life.

Clinch — whose itinerant history traverses advertising, folk singing, house painting and teaching — reaches back to his own roots in central New York to fictionalize the true story of presumed fratricide that was explored in the 1992 award-winning documentary "Brother's Keeper." The case centered on the four elderly Ward brothers, who lived in abject poverty on their generations-old dairy farm near Syracuse, N.Y. One of the brothers, William, was discovered dead in 1990. Another brother, Delbert, was acquitted of murder over prosecutorial problems, including doubts the sixth-grade dropout understood the legal machinations enveloping him.

In Clinch's hand, the four real-life Ward brothers become the three fictional Proctor brothers — Vernon, Audie and Creed — who into their senior years still live on the family's ramshackle farmhouse that "smelled cow manure and dry rot and spoiled food." It's the kind of place that seems to lean as the wind whistles through. The only bits of excess are the whimsical weather vanes Audie hand-carves from wood and sells to urban folk-art connoisseurs who see more in his whittlings than he does.

The brothers have led insular lives from birth. Creed went to war in Korea but otherwise the brothers' world is defined by what they can walk to. Or occasionally reach by tractor. They've relied on each other for everything, building from childhood an interdependency of emotional and corporal need. Nearly inseparable, they share the farm chores, their meals, even the same massive bed in which their parents had slept in the only room in their dilapidated house in which they actually live.

"I don't know how much a person is built to endure," says one character, "but I believe that living under those conditions would be a test of it. Those brothers got whittled away a little at a time."

Clinch tells his story through a mélange of voices and years, flitting from the Proctors' parents and how they came to the isolated farm to the brothers' awkward coming of age, the small circle of outsiders whose lives intersect with the brothers, and Donna, the sister who escaped the gothic lunacy by marrying a sleazy salesman, only to give birth to a son whose foray into drug dealing serves as the secondary plot line.

It is a stark portrayal, in keeping with the sorts of stories, and lives, that Carolyn Chute drew on to explore backwoods Maine in her 1980s novels "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" and "Letourneau's Used Auto Parts."

"Kings of the Earth" begins with Audie, the middle — and most vulnerable — of the three brothers, awakening to find the bed-wetting Vernon dead beside him. "My brother Vernon went on ahead," Audie says. "I woke up and felt for him but the bed was dry and my brother Creed was already up…. The bed was cold but it was dry. My brother Vernon was still in it and he was cold the bed was since he had gone on."

There's little mystery involved. We learn that Vernon had been wasting away from cancer, but it turns out that he was strangled, too, and suspicion falls quickly on Creed even as Del, a state trooper investigating the death, remains uncertain whether the mercy killing of an aging brother could be considered a crime.

Against that backdrop, Clinch plays out the two generations of Faulknerian dysfunction and rural dystopia, themes he also touched on in his 2007 debut novel, "Finn." That novel was a gripping reimagination of Huck Finn's father, whom Mark Twain had created as a violent drunk and then let him disappear into literary history. Clinch resuscitated Finn as an amorally evil man living in a patchwork shack at river's edge, where he schemes and kills when he's sober enough to function.

The Proctor brothers are the anti-Finns. They don't have an ounce of venality to split among them. Where Finn's character is almost Hobbesian in his desires and acquisitions, the Proctor boys are content to trod their impoverished backcountry, a rewardingly simple existence for three simple minds.

The power of "Kings of the Earth" lies in the intricacies of the relationships among the Proctors; neighbor and childhood friend Preston, who serves as something of a guardian angel; the drug-dealing nephew and the police. Clinch is canny enough to move his characters through their own understated lives, hinting where he needs to as he skirts the obvious, and refusing to overlay a sense of morality on their actions. The reader is the jury.

And Clinch knows his territory, both psychologically and geographically, as in this snowless winter scene:

"The drive from town was one hill after another and the view from the top was always the same. Muted shades of brown and gray. Shorn fields encroaching on wind-ravaged farmhouses, not so much as a chained dog visible. A countryside full of that same old homegrown desolation…. They climbed the last hill to the farm and saw smoke coming not just from the chimney but from a big fire in the yard. Wind yanked at the smoke, and they turned up the dirt lane and went toward the fire."

The landscape informs the story as much as the internal terrain of the characters does, giving "Kings of the Earth" a grounding that is missing from many modern novels. We know the events that lie behind Clinch's novel were real, and that the novel is not. But the realism here is no less, with writing so vibrant that you feel the bite of a northern wind, smell the rankness of dissipated lives and experience the heart-tug of watching tenuous lives play out their last inches of thread.14 s Ms.pegasus744 163

Excavate the buried stories of rural upstate New York. There the passage of time, the freezing rivulets, and rocky drumlins have relentlessly weathered the lives of the inhabitants into new versions of this ancient clay. The title is pure irony. Man holds no dominion here. “A farm is the master of you and not the other way around,” Preston Hatch muses. (p.1)

Hatch lives apart from this world despite living just up the hill from the Proctor farmstead. Through nearly 60 years observing the three Proctor boys growing up, his voice is a connecting thread in the disconnected timeline of this novel. His quiet compassion permits us to accept the world without demanding explanations. We might shrug: it is what it is, but Hatch's acceptance of their abject poverty, their indifference to it, and the comfort they take in a life governed by routine runs deeper. After half a century of observation he concludes “[it] still doesn't mean I understand any of them. Where a man comes from isn't enough. You've go to go all the way back to the seed of a man and the planting of it, and a person can't go back that far even I don't think. Because there's always another seed behind that one and another planting of it too.” (p.18)

Author Jon Clinch opens with an ending set in 1990. His final chapter is set in the same year. The structure is a circle circumscribing many smaller circles of events. Audie Proctor the mentally challenged middle brother awakens early to milk the cows and finds his older brother Vernon has died during the night. The body is already stiffening. The youngest brother Creed rushes up the hill to enlist Preston Hatch's help. Hatch phones the authorities and they wait staring at the phone: “It was a conduit to a world that had no business here.” (p.4) Later, an anomaly is found during the autopsy.

That world that has no business here includes the world of doctors and developers, the world of their sister Donna who has become a nurse and her husband DeAlton who is constantly congratulating himself for escaping his upbringing on an onion farm, a contempt he transmits to their son Tom. DeAlton is the least able character in the book, despite the repugnance we initially feel for the Proctor brothers. He's a huckster. Clinch employs DeAlton's own voice to convey this dissonant note. All of DeAlton's conversations are one-sided, whether he is pitching an angle to a prospective customer, or haranguing his son Tom. Yet, objectively, DeAlton is also the face of “progress.” Clinch has subtly held up a mirror to modernity and it is an ugly reflection indeed.

The absence of a chronological narrative draws our attention to peculiarities that hold our interest. The barn is connected directly to the house, and this is how Preston and Creed enter the house that fateful morning. The living quarters within the house are confined to a single room, the adjoining room being closed off by a padlocked door. The flock of turkeys in the yard are housed in a shoddily painted school bus. Perhaps most affecting is Audie, who sits alone at the front door of the house: “I couldn't see them all that clear but I could hear every one separate. They all make a different sound. Every one. I didn't make them that way on purpose but that's how they turned out. They can't help it and I couldn't help it either. They come out how they come out. Vernon says they're children that way. They were turning in the little wind and I listened to them turn and I felt some better.” (p.3) The “they” are whirligigs that Audie has carved and constructed over the years. Carving is the one thing that gives Audie pleasure. A bemused Preston confides that city folk make special trips to buy these examples of folk art. Thus, each of these peculiarities reflect both an incident and an oblique disclosure about a character.

Clinch has carefully selected the voices commenting on each incident. Lester, the alcoholic father is a central character prior to his death in 1939. Yet his voice (aside from dialogue) speaks only three times in the entire book; two of those instances are posthumous (see p. 92 and 232). Ruth, his wife, provides a much clearer picture of him. However, her voice is in the third person, as if she is a spectator to the events of her own life. Ruth dies in 1960 and her grave is almost a proxy for her actual existence. Months after her burial, Preston tidies up the plot and plants some grass, an embellishment beyond the imagination of her sons (p.137). By 1990 the recently deceased Vernon is interred alongside his parents. Preston encounters Audie who recoils from his touch due to the imprint of a burn he received back in 1932 while Ruth was outside pumping more water for her sons' bath. Her efforts are not only futile but earn Lester's wrath. That incident in itself is almost a synopsis of Ruth's life. There is an unspoken respect Preston has for her that Lester never had. Preston quietly appreciates her fortitude. Perhaps that certainty permits her to rest in peace with the knowledge that he will continue to help her sons survive. For her part, Ruth might have even harbored a subconscious affection for Preston even after his marriage to Margaret.

Clinch skips back and forth in chronology: 1990, 1931, 1932, 1970.... It's a method that allows him to reveal his characters with unhurried and deceptive casualness. Nevertheless, as a reader I have a difficult time with that approach. It's a quirk of insecurity I have. To compensate I read the book a second time, skipping chapters to read in chronological order. I found the exercise useful in taking notes and gaining a deeper appreciation for Clinch's structuring of his novel.

Clinch's inspiration for this book was an actual event, the story of the Ward brothers, chronicled in Hart Seely's column, “A Death in the Family.” A comparison between the article and Clinch's book demonstrated his skill in adding texture, low-key drama, and personality to the bare framework of the actual incident. This was not an easy book to read, but certainly a thought-provoking one.

NOTES:
Seely's column: http://www.northofseveycorners.com/sl...

Interview with the author is at the bottom of the synopsis at this website: https://www.bookmovement.com/bookDeta...fiction12 s RuthAuthor 11 books501

A few years ago Clinch's Finn was a best book of the year for me so I was really looking forward to Kings of the Earth. I was not disappointed. It’s a marvelous book, beautifully written. Faulkneresque without Faulkner’s opacity, the book shifts back and forth in time and focus, but we’re never confused. Clinch builds his story in bits and pieces until they fit together as beautifully as a dry-stack stone wall.

Finn was mean as a junkyard dog, but there’s not an ounce of meanness in the three Proctor brothers. Living on the farm where they grew up, ground down by dirt, manure and poverty, they sleep together in the bed they shared as boys. One of them is retarded, the other two barely literate, their world limited to this grindingly filthy farm.

From the King James bible:
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains

And then one of the brothers dies, or is murdered by one of the remaining brothers. Perhaps it’s a mercy killing. This is a fictionalization of a true story that was told in the 1992 award-winning documentary Brother’s Keeper, which I’ve just ordered from Netflix.
12 s Marialyce (back in the USA!)2,056 699

This powerful moving saga of a family that doesn't seem to have moved away from the nineteenth century is both compelling and shocking. The story of these three dirt farmer brothers is one that makes the reader aware that no matter how far we have come, there are always those that harken back in some way, shape, or form to a former time. The question, is it because of choice or is it one of destiny often comes to mind.

The boys within this tale, Creed, Audi, and Vernon have lived the lives their parents and their grandparents have lived. Through abject poverty and conditions that would and do appall many, these brothers eek out a day to day existence in squalor, lacking the basic elements into what make us a step up from animals. Poorly educated, with not a chance of ever wanting or needing change, the real world is brought into their lives when one of the brothers is found dead and the cause is questioned. The brothers who all sleep together, are suspected of the possible crime and the story takes on a surreal and oftentimes horrendous path. The townspeople, particularly a neighbor, become advocates for the men and as the story continues more and more of the family interrelationships are made apparent and we receive a glimpse into what dynamics (or lack of) have made these men become what they are. The good and the bad are presented and the lines are pretty much drawn as to the interpretation as to which of these family members are more flawed than the next.

It is a fascinating tale loosely based on the Ward Brothers of upstate New York who lived in squalor and lacked social and educational skills to ever want to attain more than what they were born into. Nature and nurture play a hand in their becoming what they do, and finding and learning of these men certainly makes the reader realize that all was not right amongst this family. Bare and base as the land they work, it is a story that will send your thoughts in many different directions and quite possibly make you ever so glad to have been born into the life that you have. 11 s Britany1,029 462

3 Brothers living in their old family farmhouse in upstate New York. All of them sharing the same bed, I picture smelly, coverall wearing boys that don't cook, or fix up the house at all. Luckily, neighbor Preston Hatch keeps an eye out for them.

The oldest brother, Vernon turns up dead one morning-- and an investigation follows, leaving the other 2 brothers as suspects. Each chapter is a different person's narration, which kept me interested. The chapters also go all over the place in time, with no normal progression, which makes it hard at times to follow the point.

Enjoyed parts of this, but didn't care for the whole drug storyline with Tom (the boys' nephew) didn't feel it meshed with the farmhouse, brotherly theme.


I have no idea what happened with Vernon by the end... Anyone else?audiobook botn11 s Melissa Crytzer Fry348 408

I am always drawn to farm settings, so this richly descriptive literary work that spanned the 1930’s through the 1990s drew me in from the start. The beauty of Clinch’s language, the sensory descriptions and the distinction between various characters’ voices was quite remarkable. For me, the novel was about people who don’t quite fit in – who are misunderstood – but are comfortable in their own environment, their own existence. It’s a story about family ties, bonds to the earth, the comfort of routine, a simpler life, and the true danger that misunderstanding can bring. I was particularly struck by the main narrator’s voice, Preston: unique, vibrant, compelling. That we could all have a neighbor him, even if he might be considered a busy-body!

Readers who favor linear storylines may find the book difficult as it quite literally jumps in sequence at the start (and throughout): 1990, 1931, 1932, 1970, 1985, 1960, 1990, 1938, 1965 … and so on. Additionally, the story is told in multiple, multiple points of view, as well as by omniscient narrators. Some readers may find it jarring.

For me, however, the author’s literary conventions and choices are what made this story so memorable. The characters were so compelling, I wanted to read, and keep reading. The setting was painted so artfully, I was drawn in. I also wanted the backstory. I wanted the different points of view. For an author to be able to keep track of that great a span of years – as well as the voices of that many characters – is truly stunning. This haunting tale and its ending (if you’re looking for tidy and wrapped-with-a-bow, you won’t find it), the beautiful language and the incredible descriptions will stick with me for a long time to come.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to lovers of literary fiction. 10 s Patrick ReinkenAuthor 4 books21

In a book, playing with time is a kind of magic trick.

If it’s done poorly, we don’t believe. We see the dove that’s up the sleeve, the different sizes of playing cards in that deck, the fake feet on the woman who’s cut in half. And we don’t blink or wonder or feel amazed.

But if it’s done well – if it’s done in a way that doesn’t reveal the trickery in the trick – then we see a reality that's different from ours. The rabbit materializes from thin air, the man teleports, the lady does vanish. And we do blink and wonder and feel amazed.

In that instance, in that single moment of how’d they do that, we’re not truly focused on how they did that. We’re just reveling in the fact that we’ve seen some event in an entirely different way – from a position where the limitations of our view have constructed a scene not otherwise available to us, and that therefore carries the possibility of both misperception and insight.

Kings of the Earth, by Jon Clinch, is a magic trick.

Superbly written, it tells the story – both singular and collective – of the Proctor brothers, who live their lives in squalor and apparent general contentment on an upstate New York farm. From their background as children raised by a distant and abusive father and an adored mother, all the way through the decades-later death of one brother and the ramifications that flow from that, Kings in its author’s hands unfolds as a series of observations by, vignettes about, and reporting on the characters in these brothers’ lives. A sort of murder mystery and modern tragedy and character/culture study rolled into one, it comes with jumps in time, point of view changes in both character and voice, and chapters that vary from multiple pages down to a single perfect sentence. Throughout all that, it is vivid and encompassing in its creations of story and setting and people.

Some may criticize that approach as adding complexity, of making the book’s telling more difficult. That’s certainly their right. Different people read a given book differently, and they carry their perspectives into it and out of it. We all have our worlds, we all have our viewpoints, and we all have our reads on things.

For me, though, Clinch’s approach is compelling in its additions. That’s because of the point above – we all see and experience and describe things uniquely, and the shifting times and points of view reveal and emphasize one of the book’s key lessons: “I thought it was the strangest thing, how a person can go through this life and not see what you see. How he can stand right next to you and it’s all different.”

Some also may criticize the book in a belief it lacks resolution. That it fails to wrap up and tell “who did it.”

That one’s not accurate.

To be sure, the writing is subtle. Again a magic trick, it’s folded together precisely and tightly. It’s tucked and fitted over itself, and any seams that exist in the way it’s pulled together are neatly stitched, almost to the point where they’re invisible.

But the “who did it” is resolved. The answer to that question can be found, as the author himself has suggested in a Kings discussion board posting here on Goodreads.

And I’ll argue the resolution isn’t the point, anyway. The point, at least to me, is the depiction of the world of these three brothers, who lived their lives in ways you or I might not understand or choose, but who were satisfied and content with the existence they had.

That’s because it was their world. It was their viewpoint. So it didn’t matter that someone might stand right next to them and see it and judge it all differently.reviewed7 s Cynthia633 43

Three brothers in upstate New York live a lonely agrarian life. They live as if from another century, almost as if on the frontier of long ago when people were isolated and had mostly just immediate family to rely on and relate to. Luckily they have a next door neighbor, Preston, who's lived in the world and has some social skills. Most of their story is shown through Preston's eyes. Vernon is the oldest brother followed by Audie and then after gap of 8 or so years there's Creed. They could almost be interchangeable however. They have a world view or hive instinct unique to them. Creed did see a little of the world when he was in the Korean War but then he comes back home and falls almost right back into lock step with Vernon and Audie. Audie's `special' though it's not quite clear if he's mentally slow, has an illness such as epilepsy or he's emotionally unstable or perhaps he's on a different spiritual level. Vernon is kind of a shadowy figure since it's his death around which the other events are centered. The book opens as he dies in his sleep in the bed the three men share. Though he's 60 something and ill when he dies the local law man suspects foul play. Creed is the main suspect. Preston steps up to defend Creed and protect Audie just as he'd always done throughout their lives.

Each chapter is headed by a different character's name. Sometimes they tell their story in first person sometimes their tale is told for them by an unnamed narrator. Oddly the third person accounts, though they have a particular character's name as the chapter heading, don't always center around that person, they're only mentioned somewhere in the text. I suspect Clinch was saying something about who is a victim and who isn't. And that's where there are some surprises. You'd expect the dead man and his damaged brother to be victims but they're not. You'd expect the youngest of the siblings, Donna, the only one of the four siblings to escape the farm, get an education and marry, to be empowered but you never hear her story first hand. This was a fascinating interplay. Clinch has a truly unique voice.books-read-in-20106 s Loretta GiacolettoAuthor 18 books14

As with FINN, in KINGS OF THE EARTH Jon Clinch again proves himself to be a master storyteller, weaving a bizarre tale about three brothers ‘making do’ on their dirt farm in Upstate New York. During the Depression squalor, poverty, and never-ending work robbed the Proctor brothers of their childhood and those same problems continue to plague them as premature old codgers who depend on each other for companionship and survival. For years they’ve been sharing the same urine-soaked bed, that is, until one of them dies in his sleep and suspicion falls on the other two. From there, it just gets better, a well-paced plot with fascinating details about the brothers and their supporting cast of equally-intriguing characters — family, neighbors, police, and exploiters. Most definitely a Good Read, one I didn’t want to end.

Full disclosure: As a Goodread member I received an advance copy of this novel from Random House, with hopes of my reviewing it.6 s Cheri1,873 2,729

Having lived in a rural area for several years where it wasn't difficult to find similar levels of lifestyle if you went looking, I felt that this story was beautifully written. It's difficult to write a story set in such poverty that manages to maintain such a high level of empathy for and dignity in its characters, but John Clinch more than manages that task. While the main characters are more than interesting, at the same time you are keenly aware that the lihood is that you'd cross the street if you were to encounter them - if for no other reason than the smell.
There were times that the changing timelines were perhaps a bit disjointed or confusing, but for the most part I found the changing narratives and perspectives added to, rather than detracted from, the story. 5 s Tara Rock150 90

"If you live long enough, you'll owe a debt to everybody you know, and some you don't. If you live right, they'll owe you back." Jon Clinch. This book had an unusual format, which I felt was a big plus. Outstanding characters and plot. Very well done. Now I am on to "Finn."4 s TheGirlBytheSeaofCortez170

Jon Clinch’s debut novel, Finn, which painted a dark but lyrical portrait of Huck Finn’s father, was an almost perfect book and one that took a very original look at one of the classics of American literature. Clinch’s second novel, the magnificent Kings of the Earth, borrows as well, but this time the book borrows from the annals of true crime as it focuses on a mysterious death among four (whittled down to three in the book) elderly, hermetic brothers, who live a hardscrabble life on a derelict dairy farm in upstate New York.

In Kings of the Earth, Vernon, Audie, and Creed Proctor, represent the four real life Ward brothers. Their life is one of isolation, destitution, and unimaginable squalor. They tend their small herd of dairy cattle, occasionally ride their ancient tractor into town (they never owned a car), and after a meager and barely life-sustaining dinner, spend their evenings watching television on an old, flickering set. They raise turkeys in an abandoned school bus and rarely, if ever, bathe. They wear their clothes until they fall off their bodies and never launder, well, anything at all. Their small, unheated, ramshackle one-room house smells “cow manure and dry rot and spoiled food,” and the three brothers carry this smell with them wherever they go.

Despite the fact that Creed, the youngest brother, fought in the Korean War, none of the three know much about life beyond their own isolated pastures nor do they want to. The Proctor brothers seem to have no use for anyone but one another. One morning in 1990, however, only two of the brothers awaken in the bed they all share. Vernon, the eldest, has died during the night, or, as Audie puts it, he “went on ahead.”

Vernon’s death is the point at which Clinch begins his book. The eldest brother, who had long battled difficulty swallowing, attributed his problem to cancer, the disease that killed the brothers’ mother. Audie and Creed seem to agree with Vernon’s self-diagnosis, but the Medical Examiner, however, has other ideas. When he finds petechiae on Vernon’s face and neck, he comes to the conclusion that Vernon has been strangled. Law enforcement descends on the two remaining brothers, eventually zeroing in on one of them as Vernon’s killer.

As other (professional) reviewers have noted, Kings of the Earth is broken into very short chapters and is told from the first person viewpoint of many different characters, even a few long dead (the occasional use of the third person viewpoint enhances the narrative rather than detracts). We hear from the brothers; their closest neighbors, Preston and Margaret, who are sympathetic to the Proctors and their plight; the Proctor parents, Lester and Ruth, the first, an abusive drunk, the second a mentally ill cancer patient; their sister, Donna, who managed to escape the farm through a marriage to a not-so-successful salesman; Donna’s husband and son; and Del, a sympathetic, but suspicious, state trooper. The book’s story is not told in chronological order. It’s present is 1990, though Clinch covers a time span of sixty years, going all the way back to 1930. This zig-zagging back and forth in time works very well, though, and it’s never confusing. In some ways, the structure, and even the voices, will remind many of William Faulkner, in other ways, Cormac McCarthy, though Clinch is still a unique American voice, and in my opinion, a much more engaging writer than McCarthy, though comparisons are always unfair. Clinch also reminds me of the great Irish writer, Edna O’Brien in his bleakness, the isolation that surrounds his characters, and the lyrical way in which he describes the land and expresses the darkest side of life.

Those looking for a murder mystery won’t find it here. Clinch is concerned, not so much with “How did Vernon die?” as he is with the psychological interplay between the brothers, something he mines to the fullest. The bond the Proctor brothers share goes far, far beyond the bond formed by “normal” siblings. The Proctor brothers are inseparable. They’ve relied on one another for everything. They live as a unit rather than three individual beings.

This book is replete with detail, but it’s carefully chosen detail. Nothing is there simply “for the sake of being there.” Every detail moves the story forward or, more often than not, tells us something we need to know about a character in order to understand him better. The following passage will show you what I mean and also serve as an example of how rich and poetic Clinch’s prose is. One reviewer called it “Whitmanesque,” and I would have to agree:

The work Audie loves best, comes to life. The clouds clear and he switches off the flashlight and keeps going. The creaking grows louder the nearer he gets. A half hundred voices raised in the night and crying out. The earth turns and the sun shines somewhere and the temperatures shift and the wind comes up and these things – these creatures, for what else are they but created – these creatures cry out in their half a hundred voices.

In describing the brothers, themselves, Clinch writes that they moved “… the ghosts of drowned men traversing the ocean floor. Their pale hair and their pale beards wavered in the light wind as on deep currents.”

And the prose in this book is not only poetic and lyrical in the very best sense of both words, it’s vibrant and alive. Clinch really transports us to a desolate farm in upstate New York in the middle of winter. In his skillful hands, the land becomes another character in the book, infusing the lives of the brothers and grounding the book in a reality that’s sadly too much missing from many novels written today. As the brothers ride home one snowless winter day on their ancient tractor, Clinch writes:

The drive from town was one hill after another and the view from the top was always the same. Muted shades of brown and gray. Shorn fields encroaching on wind-ravaged farmhouses, not so much as a chained dog visible. A countryside full of that same old homegrown desolation…. They climbed the last hill to the farm and saw smoke coming not just from the chimney but from a big fire in the yard. Wind yanked at the smoke, and they turned up the dirt lane and went toward the fire.

I don’t know many (any) beginning novelists who can write as vividly and as beautifully as that. It’s Whitmanesque, it’s Chatwinian, it’s perfect.

If I had one quibble with this near-perfect book, it would be the inclusion of a secondary storyline involving Donna’s son, the nephew of the Proctor brothers. To Clinch’s credit, this secondary storyline is very definitely intertwined with the primary storyline of the Proctor brothers and Vernon Proctor’s death; I just didn’t find it as compelling as that of the Proctor brothers and I was always anxious to return to them.

Many writers can tell a compelling story. Many writers can keep us turning the pages. Few writers, however, are genuine artists with words. Jon Clinch is. He’s already produced two great books, and I certainly expect more from him in the future. And if he’s not a candidate for the Pulitzer or the National Book Award, then I don’t know who is. Clinch stands head and shoulders above just about every other American writing today, male or female.

Kings of the Earth is a harrowing, but beautiful and unforgettable book. It explores the bonds of family, the secrets families share, their hopes, their dreams, their eccentricities no other book I can think of. Kings of the Earth is, quite simply, a modern American masterpiece. Don’t miss it.

5/5

Recommended: Definitely and enthusiastically. This is a modern American masterpiece.


american-authors based-on-real-events contemporary-authors ...more4 s Rekha858

An intriguing, if bleak, look at three elderly brothers who live and farm together in upstate New York dairy country. The three brothers have lived together in abject poverty in the same place, doing the same thing, ever since they were born. They sleep in the same bed and do everything together. When one of them dies in his sleep, the police come into their world and investigate the other two brothers for murder. The remaining brothers, barely literate and with so little contact with anyone outside of their farm, have to navigate the intrusion as best they can. Based on the true Ward brothers' case (about which the documentary film "My Brother's Keeper" was made), this rendering is less about the legal system and more about the characters' lives. I thought the characters were drawn so well, and the story, though not exactly full of action, was written in such a way as to be a true page turner. Good stuff.adultfiction4 s Jeanette3,535 688

Excellent writing and psychological depth. 3.5 star quality for sure. But between the hundreds of stench descriptions and constant jolt of time and decade! That killed my enjoyment more than I even want to admit. A man's story basically. In other words this is the complete opposition position to the chick lit genre. Feral lives.4 s Dalia1 review1 follower

Clinch's use of language and ability to evoke emotion from the mundane are unparalleled. He develops each character with compassion, yet distills the essence of their tragic nature with breathtaking clarity, making this this one of the best books I have ever read.4 s Eric706 121

This novel is loosely based on a real life incident involving a family of four brothers near Syracuse, New York, one of whom was accused of killing another. The brothers were poor, illiterate dairy farmers who slept in the same bed. They lived lives that we would consider backward and primitive. Their story was previously told in a 1992 documentary, "Brother's Keeper", which focused on how the rural community rallied behind the accused Adelbert Ward, his trial, and its outcome. Even though they were in their sixties, the community referred to the Ward brothers as "boys", partly because they'd known them since boyhood, and partly due to their simple intellect. Their existence was hardscrabble. Both in the sense of hard work, and in the sense that playing Scrabble would have been very hard for them.

Taking these raw materials, Jon Clinch fleshes out a back-story for his fictional Ward avatars, the Proctors. In Clinch's novel, there are only three brothers, not four. And there's a sister who has escaped their rough way of life. Watching the documentary, I noted some of the real life details that Clinch used to color the story. The school bus used as a poultry coop. The stubborn barn door. The neighbor who took the "boys" under his wing. The way one of the brothers would tear batting from the old couch and roll it into little balls. The jars full of tobacco spit. The way the neighbors would shy away from the boys' odor when they'd eat at the diner.

The novel is less story oriented and more of a portrait of how such a family came to be, and how they survive. Clinch skips around in time from 1932 to 1990, each chapter having a year as its title, and with sub-chapters giving the event under consideration from a particular character's point of view, an oral history. Thrown into the mix is a nephew, Tom, and the marijuana growing operation he sets up on his uncles' property, paying for the privilege by introducing Uncle Vernon to some smokable "cancer medicine".

After the novel gets going, the action splits into a few continuing narratives, offering some suspense. One thing the novel doesn't do is give you closure on the outcome of the trial of Creed (the Adelbert Ward avatar). For that, watch the movie.

After reading Clinch's first novel, , and this one, I see that Clinch is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers.booktopia-20133 s Suzanne63 1 follower

I loved this book. Clinch is letting me know the Hard South is all over this country.

It grabbed me from the first chapter, the first paragraph. This was the first book I ever slowed to take the time to diagram the characters and their relationships, to follow the stories that the living, the dead, and the dying each had to tell.

When I read his first book "Finn," I was reading William Gay's "Twilight."

This time, I was also reading "One Foot in Eden," by Ron Rash. Interesting parallels, with two great writers.

Jon Clinch, I hope you continue to write for a long time, I think you're going to be my favorite writer of all.



3 s Nancy Valley104 5

This book was quite off beat but I really enjoyed it. Three brothers dirt farming in Upstate New York. The book spans from the 30's till today. The characters were well developed and the book was very well written. I did not expect to have so much respect for the three brothers living so simply almost from another time. I also enjoyed Preston the kind neighbor. I would to think such gentlemen still exist. That there are still people out there Preston that care to help a neighbor and judge other based on their lives rather than by society norms.new-york3 s Tabitha VohnAuthor 9 books112

Down On The Farm....

At times picturesque, at other times heartrendingly disquieting, Kings of the Earth is a fascinating look into the life of a family that flat out refuses to change with the times. In fact, in the 60+ years and three generations that the story follows, hardly anything changes for the Proctor brothers, except more hard times.

One of the most remarkable facets of this novel is its narrative structure. The voices of the various characters ring as true and sincerely as if the reader has stumbled into an old hardware store or been hastily invited in to an old couple's parlor to listen to a group of elderly folks tell their life story, which they do openly and unashamedly. Within this structure, I especially d how the fierce devotion of Preston to the Proctor brothers is revealed, and how the overriding emotions of pity, empathy, and compassion are relayed.

Readers me who grew up in the country surrounded by farms can probably appreciate this story on a different level. I know elderly people who still live in houses with cast iron stoves that they use as heat and still use a rotary phone (hopefully I used the right term for that). Therefore, Clinch's depiction of these people who remain untouched by time rings true.

The only part of the story that I could have done without was the narrative on Tom. Frankly, I could have cared less about his drug cartel, although it does bear relevancy towards the resolution of the story. I would have much preferred that his narrative be excluded or told by one of the other characters. His became so tedious to read (and was so discorded with the rhythm of the other narratives)that I eventually skipped over them entirely, only backtracking at the end b/c unfortunately, he finally had something constructive to say.

That being said, this is a rare, unique tale and one that I recommend.



high-brow2 s Amy1,654 150

I've heard fantastic things about Jon Clinch so I was really looking forward to Kings of the Earth. It sounded something right up my alley. And it really was a great read ... it was fantastic!

Jon Clinch is a very talented writer ... his writing just made the scenes come alive for me. I didn't want to put the book down ... the writing, the character development, the weaving of time ... it's all wonderful! Clinch brought the world of the three brothers alive for me and I felt as if I was part of the book myself at times. The squalor and poverty were so beautifully portrayed that I almost felt as if I could feel and smell the farm. At first I was worried about the way that Clinch tells the story - through multiple voices that jump around in time. However, it was ultimately a really effective tool and gave the book something special. And, I never became confused or frustrated by the jumping. Clinch did a masterful job of weaving the story together into a cohesive and outstanding story.

In the end, I was sad to put it down ... I didn't want the narrative to end. The complexity of the storytelling and the writing made this book one of my favorites of the year! I can't wait to go pick up Finn which I also hear is fantastic! This is a great novel that I definitely recommend!busy-as-a-bee-books-group fiction read-in-2010 ...more2 s Kathleen13

Kings of the Earth is the story of the Proctor family's life, and slow death, on a dying dairy farm, a novelization of the Ward Brothers story. A trip through the rural back roads of upstate New York, when, instead of stopping only at the diner and flea market, the text invites you to become part of the life of the town.

Moreover, this text is so beautifully written you'll want to copy sentences into your journal--even if it means you have to start a journal to do so. Here's one of my favorites: "People in this area of gotten pretty well removed from the agrarian way of life even though it's still right at their doorstep, and here came this curious little man--I've heard him described as looking a hermit or Rip Van Winkle or a prophet from the Old Testament--here he was in the flesh, reminding them of something they had come from but had let themselves forget about" (p. 266). Goll, this was a good read. 2 s Edwina389 10

Aw, this is just the best book for me right now. I've been through a rash of sad, the World is ending, I'm drinking myself to death because nothing is worth living for books, and I needed something with bite, character, complex ideas. This book saved my summer.

A person can only read so many simply written books aimed at our young adults before needing, really needing, complex sentences, diverse voices, interesting settings. And this book has me wondering how can one writer come up with so many voices, and make them ALL believable.

This is a slice of Americana that everyone should read.

Just finished this book with a satisfied sigh. I stopped reading "Last night I sang to the monster" because it was too sad and hopeless and picked up "Kings of the Earth". This book was so full, and yes, it was sad, but never hopeless. There were more angels than devils, more triumph than pain, more help than challenges. You know in your heart it's all going to be ok.2 s Lonnie147 13

A Goodreads Giveaway book. Incredible! This book was written in such a way that I constantly anxious to find out what would happen next. Short chapters with numerous narrators made it hard to put down at the end of the night. Countless times I thought I would just read one more chapter, but then it is pretty short so just another, and another, and another. The only complaint I have with the book is that it didn’t seem to wrap up the unanswered questions as well as I would have suspected and the bouncing timeline had me confused from time to time. However, those 2 areas were not enough to knock this book much. Four out of five stars and I would recommend it to anyone. A number of times the writing reminded me of the style of Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath.2 s Cat28

I was lucky enough to find the ARC for this novel at the Library used book sale. I threw it into my $1 bag and I am glad I did. I haven't read Finn so I cannot compare Kings of the Earth to it. I can tell you I enjoyed this book and looked forward to reading it until I finished it. I enjoyed the method in which Clinch told the story, moving from character to character and back and forth on the timeline. In the beginning I lost track of who was who, but soon I "knew" each character and could follow the story Clinch was weaving. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and recommend it for everyone.arcs-received-elsewhere2 s Carol317

Clinch takes three prosaic lives and adds details with a beauty beyond feeling. You feel every emotion of each elderly man, that time and people have neglected or forgotten. Three brothers on a derelict dairy farm in upstate New York left amid the cows and the weeds to carry on in a tradition that defies understanding for me. I cried ,I laughed and at times was completely baffled as to the whys and wherefores they were allowed to subsist at that level of deterioration.

It is well worth reading , I was never put off by the stream on conscienceness writing, it was easy to follow. That is what made me feel as if I was inside their minds. 2011-read-booklist2 s Sonja YoergAuthor 8 books1,137

Dark, stark and, oddly enough, funny at times. The story of three brothers who've lived their entire lives on a farm in Upstate New York, sharing the same bed, and wearing the same clothes by the sound of it. Clinch's style is simple and direct, and incredibly powerful. Think if Faulkner and Kent Haruf had a baby. Okay, that would be weird, but you catch my drift. I read Kings of the Earth two years ago and still think of it from time to time. What book have you read recently you can say that about? character-driven2 s Julie139

This was another First Reads win for me. Though I've given it three stars, I'd really rate it about 3.5. I enjoyed the story, though the way it was presented was a bit hard to follow (jumping around in time, from character to character, being told sometimes in first person, sometimes third). There also wasn't as much depth to the characters as I had hoped for. I would be interested to read more from this author, but I can't say it was a favorite.first-reads2 s Bookmarks Magazine2,042 778

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