To get an idea of Donald Ray Pollock’s astonishing new book, one could try to imagine a drunken punch-up between a redneck Hemingway and an amphetamine-fuelled Raymond Carver… a fiendishly enjoyable collection
Daily Telegraph

To get an idea of Donald Ray Pollock’s astonishing new book, one could try to imagine a drunken punch-up between a redneck Hemingway and an amphetamine-fuelled Raymond Carver… a fiendishly enjoyable collection
Daily Telegraph

In Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock give us the impossible - fast, funny stories about the saddest people you'll ever see in fiction ... More engaging than any new fiction in years
Chuck Palahniuk

Pollock’s writing is lean and unflinching. His economical prose excels in its lurid (and often scatological) detail, and his physical descriptions are superb. The book is laced with dry, black humour.
New Statesman

Pollock’s writing is lean and unflinching. His economical prose excels in its lurid (and often scatological) detail, and his physical descriptions are superb. The book is laced with dry, black humour.
New Statesman

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock is the best book I have ever read. This is the America they don't let you see on television. This is real literature. It will be read for centuries.
Michael Guinzburg

It’s as if you put David Lynch, Denis Johnson, and a drunk speed freak body builder into a blender. The result are some of the darkest, wildest, most messed up, hilarious stories I’ve ever read. Knockemstiff is really something
Willy Vlautin

Like Denis Johnson, Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver before him, Pollock populates his stories with low-lives and junkies, dreamers and drunks...He is a master of voice and phrasing, and there are some knockout, pitch-perfect sentences…. Pollock treats readers to inventive, melodic and captivating storytelling. It may be as ragged as junkies’ jeans, but this has the potential to be a whiskey-stained classic
Time Out

Like Denis Johnson, Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver before him, Pollock populates his stories with low-lives and junkies, dreamers and drunks...He is a master of voice and phrasing, and there are some knockout, pitch-perfect sentences…. Pollock treats readers to inventive, melodic and captivating storytelling. It may be as ragged as junkies’ jeans, but this has the potential to be a whiskey-stained classic
Time Out

This electrifying collection of linked stories ... has the drive and impact of a fine novel. After every story in Knockemstiff I had to take a walk and let my head cool down. I keep reaching for some other writer to compare him with ... but Pollock is no shadow of anybody else. This is a powerful talent at work
Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

The majority of the inhabitants of Knockemstiff, Ohio … seem straight out of John Boorman’s film Deliverance … Life experience shows in this exceptional collection
Guardian

The majority of the inhabitants of Knockemstiff, Ohio … seem straight out of John Boorman’s film Deliverance … Life experience shows in this exceptional collection
Guardian

What makes this an enjoyable read is Pollock’s aptitude for a funny gag in the guise of amazingly inventive language
Dazed and Confused

What makes this an enjoyable read is Pollock’s aptitude for a funny gag in the guise of amazingly inventive language
Dazed and Confused

I picked this up Sunday, intending to read a story or two before I went to the movies. Three hours later, I was reluctantly finishing the last story. I just couldn’t put it down, because as sad, seedy and sordid as the lives and stories are, there was an honesty, commitment and balls-to-the-walls verve to the writing that was ultimately exhilarating ... This is the kind of short story collection that reminds people that love them why
Terry Goodman, Senior Book Buyer, Amazon.com

I haven't felt this way about an author since I read my first Steinbeck or Baldwin. The problem I have is that Knockemstiff is Pollock's only book, so I don't have anything else by him to read. It's about time a fantastic author comes around who writes this amazingly about real things. Pollock fills a void not seen in American fiction in a long time
Erik Brueggemann, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington, KY

A serious, moving, funny, dark collection
Scotland on Sunday

A serious, moving, funny, dark collection
Scotland on Sunday

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock is the best book I have ever read. This is the America they don't let you see on television. This is real literature. It will be read for centuries.
Michael Guinzburg

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock is the best book I have ever read. This is the America they don't let you see on television. This is real literature. It will be read for centuries.
Michael Guinzburg

This is too easy: Knockemstiff flat-out knocked me out. Don Pollock’s done us a favor: May all that talk about southern Gothic/grotesque writers stop immediately. I want to read about these characters’ pains, mishaps, and successes, but I don’t want to live their lives. These connected stories, set in an ultra-rural Ohio, prove that great stories are all about characters seeking what might be perceived as universal truths, or fleeing from them. I can’t wait for more, more, more.
George Singleton, author of Work Shirts for Madmen and The Half Mammals of Dixie

It’s as if you put David Lynch, Denis Johnson, and a drunk speed freak body builder into a blender. The result are some of the darkest, wildest, most messed up, hilarious stories I’ve ever read. Knockemstiff is really something
Willy Vlautin

It’s as if you put David Lynch, Denis Johnson, and a drunk speed freak body builder into a blender. The result are some of the darkest, wildest, most messed up, hilarious stories I’ve ever read. Knockemstiff is really something
Willy Vlautin