The Lost Country, a posthumo novel by William Gay, reviewed by Michael A. Ferro – Heavy Feather Review

Contents:

• “THE LOST COUNTRY,” BY WILLIAM GAY
• THE LOST COUNTRY, A POSTHUMO NOVEL BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY MICHAEL A. FERRO
• THE LOST COUNTRY — WILLIAM GAY
• THE LOST COUNTRY BY WILLIAM GAY EBOOK

“THE LOST COUNTRY,” BY WILLIAM GAY

The Lost Country was published posthumoly, ten years after thor William Gay’s ath. Fans of Gay’s work speculate when the text was posed, batg whether fell toward the begng or end of his reer.

Regardls of Gay’s origal tentns, the novel’s lack of a plete arc ftly explor the actured nature of the Amerin dream the south. Gay suggts that there is no space for nnectn wh this ght landspe – that survival and livg are distct om one another, and the latter nnot be accsed by lower-class southerners like Edgewater. Midway through the novel, Gay wr that “realy only touched Edgewater plac of transiency, jails and b statns, the highway.

While we nnot be certa what Gay’s tentns were for the novel when he first drafted , the rult is a hntg and visceral renrg of the Amerin south.

THE LOST COUNTRY, A POSTHUMO NOVEL BY WILLIAM GAY, REVIEWED BY MICHAEL A. FERRO

William Gay. The term most monly ed to scribe William Gay’s novels is “southern gothic, ” which I suppose fs his latt – and last – book well.

Gay unfortunately passed before The Lost Country’s release, although he had wrten the bulk of the novel durg the seventi, long before his untimely passg 2012.

Gay had acknowledged to iends that Edgewater was a semi-tobgraphil character, albe slightly exaggerated for entertament purpos.

THE LOST COUNTRY — WILLIAM GAY

There may be a reason for the plot’s lack of any real purpose, as the novel was bbled together through sheer termatn by Sonny Brewer and Gay’s fay after his passg.

THE LOST COUNTRY BY WILLIAM GAY EBOOK

We will never know if the fished product would have differed had Gay lived long enough to plete – or if what we have been given is exactly as he tentned. Born Tennsee 1939, William Gay began wrg at 15 and thored his first novel at 25 but didn’t beg publishg until well to his fifti. One nnot help but wonr what the world of southern gothic lerature might be like had William Gay published earlier life.

Much like Flkner, McCarthy, and O’Connor, Gay was a master of the bleak and the betiful, able to break your heart one sentence and cut out and toss on a sptg p fire the next.

Origally nsired lost followg his ath, thanks to the folks at the wonrful die prs, Dzanc Books, Gay’s newt work has found the light of day. Much of what has given Gay a cult followg the lerary world is on high display here: a troubled and wanrg anti-hero, a wi-rangg st of vagabonds that vary om sners to sats, and a particular yearng for the quixotic ialism of certa ral small-town ge societi—plac “where liv were so margal they seemed srcely to exist at all, everythg that passed between the paper that proved their birth and the paper that proved their ath jt mormongerg and hearsay”—a landspe that n only be scribed as uniquely, perhaps pafully Amerin.