BookBrowse Reviews Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

BookBrowse:

This debut novel might be studded with plenty of gore but there's a strong story and evocative writing buried underneath it all.

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Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Debut Author Award

Brian Panowich's debut novel, Bull Mountain, follows three generations of small-time drug-runners as their enterprise begins to crumble around them.

Bull Mountain, an isolated peak in Georgia, is home to the Burroughs family — men who make their living selling illegal substances, first producing moonshine during the Prohibition, branching out to marijuana the following generation, and finally turning to meth production in the book's present. One scion of this clan, Clifford Burroughs, has turned his back on his criminal past and kin to become the county sheriff. Clifford is approached by ATF agent Simon Holly, who is aware of what the Burroughs family is up to and wants Clifford to convince his lawless elder brother (the current head of the family) to help him go after a much larger operation. Clifford agrees, setting off a disastrous chain of violence that threatens to engulf the sheriff's family and friends as they're forced to take sides. As the plot follows his attempts to keep the situation contained, it also skips back in time to illustrate the characters of those involved and to help readers understand what brings each to their ultimate fate.

The story itself is utterly absorbing and enough of a reason to read the book, but as a bonus Panowich's writing is also exceptional, particularly for a genre in which action sequences typically take precedence over quality narrative. The author is equally adept at portraying scenes that can only be described as horrific as well as creating passages of great beauty:

This early, the sky was a purple bruise. The churning chorus of frogs and crickets was beginning to transition into the scurry of vermin and birdsong – a woodland changing of the guard. On frigid mornings like this one, the fog banked low over the veins of kudzu like a cotton blanket, so thick you couldn't see your feet to walk through it. It always made [him] smile to know that the clouds everyone else looked up to see, he looked down on from the other side. He reckoned that must be how God felt.

In addition, Panowich is an expert at turning the perfect phrase — succinct but completely apt:

Val was solid-muscled farm boy...He was also black as night, no stars. He looked like a mountain of Kentucky coal in a flannel shirt.

Clayton's drinking wasn't a wildfire turning his life into a blazing inferno, it was a fine layer of rust slowly decaying and dissolving his marriage.

The place used to be a symbol of her childhood, of summer, something dear. Now it was the burial ground of murderers and thieves. She was surprised that the lush grass and bright green moss around the pond wasn't rotting and brown, considering the amount of bad blood in the dirt.

The author strikingly conveys the simmering rage that resides just under the surface of most of his characters. It's ever-present, like a heartbeat or electrical current, bubbling away in the background and influencing every aspect of the plot, constantly threatening to erupt in violence with little or no warning. The tension is palpable and never lets up for a second, even during the relatively calm scenes.

The book won't appeal to everyone due to its exceptionally violent nature; it has a body count that rivals that of the best Shakespeare tragedies, and the deaths relayed are quite messy (think a Quentin Tarantino movie in novel form). Most of the women in the story are treated heinously, which many readers will find too upsetting to be able to enjoy the story.

The biggest challenge I had with Bull Mountain was that the time period changed from chapter to chapter, which made it difficult to follow at times. With most of the main characters having the last name "Burroughs," I had to make a conscious effort to remind myself which generation was the current focus. I'd normally consider this technique too confusing and consequently a weakness, but late in the book it became apparent that the story wouldn't have had the same impact if it had been laid out chronologically. It might have helped to have had more differentiation between the three generations of the Burroughs family patriarchs. I'm fairly sure the author wanted to demonstrate that each man was just like his father, but more variation in their characters might have gone a long way toward lessening the occasional confusion I felt as the book jumped around in time.

For me, Bull Mountain is an absolute winner; I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in years. Readers who can tolerate violent scenes will find a brilliant story and top-notch writing buried under the gore. Highly recommended.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in September 2015, and has been updated for the July 2016 edition. Click here to go to this issue.