Haints Stay is nothing if not gritty. Colin Winnette’s novel focuses on a pair of brothers, Brooke and Sugar, professional murderers who spend their days doing other people’s dirty work. They ask very few questions and seemingly find neither pleasure nor disgust in their task, as long as they earn enough coin to feed themselves and put a roof over their heads, at least once in a while.

The story opens with the pair returning to town, ready to be paid and bathed. Instead they find the place in ruins and under the rule of a sinister tiny man and his thugs. Things soon turn ugly, causing the brothers to flee into the wild, only to run into further danger and strife. The focal point of this trouble begins when they wake one morning to a strange, seemingly amnesiac boy (whom they christen Bird) who has quite literally nothing, not even clothes. Bird exists at the opposite pole as the brothers, his blank, unknowing innocence juxtaposing the killers’ world-weary ruthlessness perfectly. He’s not even afraid, which the brothers are soon to put right:

“‘My brother is trying to scare you.’

‘Why?’ asked the boy.

‘Because you’re wrong not be be frightened of two men sleeping in the woods,’ said Sugar. ‘Especially these two men.'”

Things soon stray into even darker and stranger territory, as Winnette exercises his plain and unflinching language to detail all manner of violence and terror, from marauding bandits to a nightmarish boogeyman in the woods. It’s a dangerous game to compare anyone to Cormac McCarthy, a man almost closer to the authors of the old testament than contemporary fiction, but Winnette’s prose has that same calculated indifference, twisted characters held at arms length and captured with a cold and unlikely logic.

From a brilliant line on the very first page (“Each night, Brooke counted the stars until he fell asleep and woke blinded by the one”), Winnette paints the desperate, surreal fringes of the American West in prose that possesses not just heft and weight but also an undeniable beauty.

Haints Stay shares that backwoods weirdness of McCarthy’s early work, the characters existing at a violent and isolated edge of society,  plus strains of Blood Meridian, particularly during the brothers’ plain philosophising on the nature of killing and death. Take for example the passage in which Brooke and Bird are stalking a deer:

“You’re going to feel a certain kind of pride, a sense of accomplishment. But you’re also going to feel uneasy with that, as if there’s something wrong with it. There isn’t. Its as natural as breathing. That guilt is all fear anyway. Fear that one day you’re going to be on the receiving end of a blow, and the sudden wish that no one had to do that kind of thing ever.”

Needless to say things twist and turn as the story progresses, as both future and past is revealed. You’ll have to read it to find out what happens, but expect sudden snows, severed limbs and even childbirth. Oh and killing. Lots of killing.

The music I’ve chosen to accompany Haints Stay attempts to capture an atmosphere, that dark underbelly of America that has been expressed through folk music for years. Some of these songs are classics, others released this year, and all hold links (at least in my mind) to the novel.

Tracklisting:

1) Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield – Randy Newman
2) Hang Me, Oh Hang Me – Dave van Ronk
3) Trouble Comes Knocking – Timber Timbre
4) She Goes Alone – Mariposa
5) O Death – Ralph Stanley
6) Us – Western Skies Motel
7) Death to Everyone (Bonnie “Prince” Billy cover) – Psalmships
8) War Paint – Water Liars
9) Sugar Baby – Dock Boggs
10) Satan is Real – The Louvin Brothers

Haints Stay is out now on No Exit Press (UK) and Two Dollar Radio (USA). Buy direct from the publisher via the links or ask at your favourite independent bookshop.

The post Lit Links: Colin Winnette – Haints Stay appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas Cover) – Gwar^
2. Rebellion (Lies) (Arcade Fire Cover) – Trampled By Turtles^
3. Hickory (Iron & Wine Cover) – Pilots & Errors
4. Candy O (The Cars Cover) – Richard Buckner
5. No Diggity (Backstreet Cover) – Chet Faker
6. All Hell For a Basement (Big Sugar Cover) – Jordan Soles
7. Locked In (Wesley Wolfe Cover) – Schooner
8. Hollywood Forever Cemetry Sings (Father John Misty Cover) – Tashaki Miyaki
9. Motor Away (Guided By Voices Cover) – Bill Times a Billion
10. Kid’s Allright (Bettie Serveert Cover) – Three Blind Wolves
11. (What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding (Brinsley Schwartz Cover) – Shovels & Rope
12. Red Comet Dust (Jason Molina Cover) – CFCF
13. I Would Not Die in the Springtime (Stephen Foster Cover) – Field Report
14. On of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen Cover) – Father John Misty
15. True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston Cover) – Isaac Delusion
16. Entertainment (Phoenix Cover) – Dinosaur Jr.
17. Hey Tonight (Free Energy Cover) – Patrick Stickles
18. Los Angeles, I’m Yours (The Decemberists Cover) – Mariachi El Bronx
19. Days of Heaven (Randy Newman Cover) – Phosphorescent
20. Everything Trying (Damien Jurado Cover) – Night Beds*
21. I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) – Mark Kozelek

* – Taken from the Night Beds Chapel Session by Fuel Friends
^ – Taken from the A.V. Undercover series.

This mix is intended as a way of giving artists some publicity. Please have a closer look at the bands you enjoy, then maybe go to a show and buy their records. They probably have families to feed too.

The Covers Mix: Volume #7 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post The Covers Mix: Volume #7 appeared first on Various Small Flames.