RaveNPRFor readers new to Daniel Woodrell\'s work, The Maid\'s Version is a perfect introduction and an invitation to read more. It\'s a short book — almost a novella at a mere 164 pages — but there are lifetimes captured here ... Woodrell is a master of brevity, with an unparalleled ability to compact an entire existence into the fewest words possible ... And although these lives are succinctly told, there is nothing rushed or fleeting in Woodrell\'s prose — there is all the attention and nuance evident in his descriptions of the main characters, and yet the reader is left stunned at the deep sense of bereavement inspired by these lost lives briefly glimpsed ... As Woodrell tells Alma\'s grief, he draws a sharp portrait of rural America in the years of the Great Depression. There is a clear sense of lives lived on the edge of destitution, and of the hardships to come ... Throughout this remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our own.
