KEY POINTS:
John Hunt is an oddity. A horse-trainer in the high plains of Wyoming, he is the only black in the village. A tolerant, compassionate man with a strong sense of moral proprieties, his faith in his fellow creatures is sorely tested by an outbreak of hate crimes in this small, rural community.
Hunt's wife is dead, but he is still scarred by her memory. He lives on the ranch with his uncle Gus, a sceptical and wary old man who is not short on practical wisdom.
Into their world comes a distinct sense of unease as a young gay college boy is murdered. At this inopportune time, the young gay son of an old friend arrives. The hate crimes explode.
Hunt is an ironic choice of narrator for this tale. Being black, he too is subjected to racial abuse. As the employer of the only suspect in the first case and the friend of the victim of the next, he is by no means the dispassionate observer of events. He straddles an uncomfortable divide between objectivity and passionate involvement.
Percival Everett's slim novel is an attempt to anatomise the consequences - but not the causes - of the blind hatred that still characterises America. The trouble is that the bones of Everett's plotting are all too visible. He gathers all available minorities into one small space and sets the local rednecks free to hate them. The native Indian, the black and the gay: all are lined up to be abused or worse. The ending is enigmatic, suggesting the expanding consequences of hate crimes and their real threat to civilised society.
Everett's writing is economical. The hostile setting is quickly and effectively established, and all his characters are "wounded'', deftly developed into three-dimensional entities. I just wish his plotting were less obvious.
*Faber, $35.00
- Extra, HoS
