The Maid's Version

A Novel

By: Daniel Woodrell

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

The American master's first novel since Winter's Bone (2006) tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.

Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident?

Alma thinks she knows the answer - and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace - and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it" - tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs.

©2013 Daniel Woodrell (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"If William Faulkner lived in the Ozark Mountains today and wrote short, powerful novels set in that little-understood, much-maligned swath of rural America, he might sound a lot like Daniel Woodrell." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"In prose both taut and lyrical, Winter's Bone vividly evokes the spirit of one little woman warrior." (Edna O'Brien)

What really happened

I liked this book. A lot. But it’s a challenge to explain why because there were things about it that were hard to like. The writing is outstanding. Woodrell uses economy and eloquence in a narrative filled with secrets, resentment, and sometimes, when least expected, dry dark humor. (His description of the “accidental” demise of a well hated citizen is priceless.) He has written characters vividly without letting us really get to know any of them well. It’s this arm’s length distance that makes it hard to become fully immersed in the story. But looking back I suspect that was the author’s intention. Alma, telling her version of the story, is herself hard to get close to – prickly, resentful, suspicious, and unyielding. Her distance from those she is describing keeps us at that same distance.

Alternating first person narration through Alma and her grandson, we learn from Alma’s memory what lead up to and followed the fire that killed 42 people, including her wayward but beloved sister. No one is ever called to account, and Alma's need for justice solidifies to a hard stone of anger towards those in the small town who are content to just let it go, ostracizing the troublemakers who refuse to do so. The author often switches to third person voice to relay biographical vignettes of other fire victims, and of characters whose roles remain unclear until the end when all the pieces are connected.

These narrative switchbacks caused a bit of auditory whiplash, making me hit the 30 second back-up many times when normal attention to traffic distracted me just enough to miss who was speaking and who was being spoken of. The print version would have made it easy see when a new narrative section was starting - it was not so clear just by listening. I have reluctantly dropped a star from the overall experience because those frequent back-ups took me out of the story just a little too often. But I can also happily give 5 stars to the story for the astounding writing quality and a tale that has stuck with me for the two days since I finished it. This may be a good Audible/Kindle combination for members who use both.

Not what I expected

This author has a great handle on the assembling of words. I'm not sure how else to say it. I can't find fault with the wording. It reminded me of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in the style and set up of the story. That's it because all else fell apart.
The chapters fell into a plausible format. It didn't hold my interest so much that I couldn't put it down, but it kept me thinking about who did it and why, when I wasn't reading it.
If the author had written this a little more directly, we wouldn't have had the wonderful characters and their stories. However Grandma, the important character who tells all at the end, is relegated to snippets dropped into the story instead of being the main character.
In the end I have no idea who really reveals what happened except the author tells us. The ending was satisfactory in that I finally understood what caused the fire. There was no handmaiden to tell the tale.
The plot is great. Who set the fire in the dance hall? It was how the plot formulated afterward that was confusing and meandered through the book. I kept listening, but at times skipped ahead whole chapters. It seems I didn't miss anything important as the ending came and tied the story in a bow.

Confusing, yet interesting

The plot was difficult to follow with the audio, I think it would have been better to read this, the jumping of perspectives made it hard to feel connected to the characters.

Looking for History

My great great GREAT great grandfather was J.Wiser of the West Plains dance hall explosion. Looking for some history or insight and not finding any since I, and many of the women in our family have a deadly genetic mutation. This didn't really provide any info, but was entertaining! Loved the story!

Couldn't Quit Listening!

Loved it! From the begining I had to know what was coming next...every character in this story was brought to life dancing on the edges of every chapter...

Another Version

I'm a fan of Woodrell's work; Winter's Bone is one of the best books I've read. His writing captures a depth of character that makes them hard to leave on the page, and he has an eye for those odd but gritty details that make his stories so hard-edged and memorable. Reading his work, I am often reminded of one of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy. Both of them have a unique way of using words that makes the language seem a little more vivid and crisp, the situations a little more unpredictable and precarious. The Maid's Version is no exception, and condenses a big story into a little time losing none of the power.

I'll offer this advice of what not to do reading this short tale...stop/start several times. The story is a flowing tale shared by Alma to her grandson; there isn't a lot of character development or set up, so the flow is really important for the overall impact. It might just have been me...but some things just don't lend themselves to stopping and starting. I was hooked and moving along with baited breath, but once I had to stop, it was hard to get back in step with the same fluid intensity. The writing was as always, a treat, but Woodrell deserves better and so do readers. If this was a story that interested me as much as the writing fed me -- I'd go into seclusion and start again, but admit that even with the interruptions and the high praise the book is getting, I don't think it did, in my case. My advice would be to commit to the 4 hours for the full listening enjoyment and judge for yourself.

Faulkner of the Ozarks

Gorgeous, lyrical and poetic. And dark. Just perfect. Troxell is the perfect narrator for Woodrell's work.

Woodrell and Troxell are a Dynamic Pair!

When you put these two artists together you're going to have a hit! I can't get enough of Woodrell's story telling and I've been in LOVE with Troxell's voice and talent as a narrator for years now! More Please!!

Disjointed

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This is my first review to write after listening to over 100 audiobooks, but I felt it needed to be written. I enjoyed the author's imagery and poetry-like descriptions, but the story was too "all over the place". The vignettes, while independently interesting, were not in any sort of reasonable order (at least none that I could discern from listening to the audiobook) which made following the story difficult. They jumped randomly from World War I to the 1960s and everywhere in between. While I don't always mind this in certain books or films, it just didn't work in this book.
Also, from the descriptions I read, both Audible and in other publications, I believed that this book was written as a mystery. It read more like a bunch of disjointed barely-connected stories, none of which piqued my interest as to who (if anybody) might have committed the deed in question. I'm extremely glad it was only four hours long, as I would not have been happy to have wasted any more of my time than that listening to this book.

Would you ever listen to anything by Daniel Woodrell again?

I will probably listen to Winter's Bone in the future, just because it has been so well received.

Have you listened to any of Brian Troxell’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No