Southern Gothic unleashes full fury in this masterful narrative from one of the finest writers at work. Daniel Woodrell, Ozark-born and -based, appears to have absorbed something elemental from the eerie plateau region of the central United States. He understands the essential menace deep within human nature and that the savage tends to stalk art at its most sublime ... To describe Woodrell as a great American writer is a lamentable understatement; this new novel is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy at his finest ... His prose is a thing of hard beauty, simple, rhythmic, at times nuanced with biblical intensity that counters the curt verbal exchanges uttered by characters who are so often beyond caring. Alma still cares. Time has caused her to fester. It is this that sustains a novel that no reader is ever likely to forget ... Angry, tormented characters stalk the pages of this remarkable tale. Woodrell’s majestic gifts create an unforgettable impression of one woman’s life played out against a horrific crime that was never solved but remained to haunt all involved. Yet again Daniel Woodrell has created a wonder of power and barbaric grace.

...exsquisite ...In The Maid’s Version, Woodrell orchestrates a captivating, almost operatic narrative of how tragedy and grief can transform places and people ... With an economical brilliance similar to that of Denis Johnson in Train Dreams, Woodrell delivers a stunning story of one small town, and all of its profound complexities and opaque mysteries. It’s a considerable achievement, and a pleasure to read.

Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality – a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling – of late rather an unfashionable mode ... the invocation of...muscular, expert voices, with their idiomatic tongues, has an enthralling effect, both exhilarating and terrifying. You don't want to sit on their knees, necessarily, but you do want to pull up a chair and partake of the experience ... the narrative tenor of The Maid's Version is mightily unsentimental ... an exploration of the psychology of trauma, the roles and labels given to individuals in societies, as well as the relationship of poverty to impotence, of wealth to immunity, of sex to power ... The reader does eventually find out what happened...but that's not really the point. Woodrell's fiction has been described as 'southern noir', and his latest work does contain elements of crime, horror, femmes fatales, feuds and villains. But under the grisly, seductive, colloquial tone is a very unusual thing – a communitarian novel: a novel concerned with how we live – and sometimes die – together, how we share experiences through the rituals of speaking and writing, because that is the fundamental spirit and purpose of language.

... I'd gladly sign a petition to see Mr. Woodrell included on any roll call of America's finest living writers. He conveys a sense of the past with the stringent affection of Katherine Anne Porter; his turns at bedlam humor are worthy of Charles Portis; and his gorgeously tangled prose is all his own ... One of the distinct pleasures of reading Mr. Woodrell is the way that the efficient, reined-in stories—his books rarely exceed 200 pages—contrast with the tropical profusion of the sentences, which curl and drape like kudzu vines over the bare trunks of the scenes ... And as you journey through the dense jungle of description you're constantly arrested by phrases as bright and striking as wildflowers ... The result is a short, taut novel that reads both slowly and luxuriously.

Daniel Woodrell's first novel since his celebrated Winter's Bone blends the folkloric with Southern gothic, historical recapitulation with fictional investigative journalism, all suffused in his matchless tenderness of telling ... The narrative quest of The Maid's Version is pursued by zigzag routes. Woodrell is concerned with pauperdom, inveterate dynastic feud, with the sorrows and endurance of labouring women ... I know nothing of Ozark dialect save what Woodrell has taught me – and yet I have the sense of having heard its authentic tropes and rhythms. In The Maid's Version, the oral and the poetic tangle and splice. Alma and Ruby are illiterate: the grandson's narration raises their tongue to occasional elegiac beauty. Woodrell's characteristic devices - zeugma, paradox, ellipsis, alliteration - are far more than decorative ... Whodunnit? The answer is low-key and perhaps less crucial than the outlandish 'winged loneliness' of the voices the narrator echoes.

For 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.

At a slim 164 pages, it’s tempting to call this tale...a novella — until you read the first dense, dazzling paragraph. It’s almost as if Woodrell, the master of celebrated Ozark-gothic reveries like Winter’s Bone, writes his sentences in clotted cream, where other authors work in skim milk. In just a few curlicued lines, dozens of West Table’s citizens — bankers and derelicts, brimstone preachers and good-time girls — are brought vividly to life ... Maid’s is a whodunit, but really it’s the who and not the dun that stays with you: Characters are drawn with such skill and sympathy that every fate resonates.

Over the meandering course of Daniel Woodrell’s slender novel, Alma’s grandson reveals her collection of observations and suspicions and reminds us of the destructive, addictive way that tragedy eats at a society ... Alma persists in her convictions, the strength of which carries this unusual and haunting novel ... , the mystery of the Arbor Dance Hall explosion unfolds, slowly and sometimes confusingly ... It can make for puzzling reading. But I suspect Woodrell is telling us something. The truth, as this one woman knows it, is both clear and complicated ... Fans of Woodrell’s previous novel, Winter’s Bone, may come away from The Maid’s Version a bit startled. This latest work lacks the cruel narrative drive of Winter’s Bone...and delivers a much more subtle reward. The impact of The Maid’s Version comes more from contemplation and consideration than a moving final scene, but I urge readers to spend the time with this story. Woodrell’s finely tuned writing and layered narrative are more than sufficient recompense.

... Woodrell knows how to command a reader's attention — not so much with plot twists, but with well-built sentences. They can sound almost biblical, if the Bible had been written in the Ozarks ... In a mere 164 pages, Woodrell unravels a literary mystery about love and betrayal amid the haves and have-nots of a small town ... Woodrell's writing flows but is never flowery. He has called his novels and short stories 'country noir.' English professors would call his style poetic realism. Readers will simply fall into the story.

Short chapters reveal only the most telling and scarce details of Woodrell’s lineup of characters, lending the story a spare, bitter charm. This may be a minor work for this major American writer, but no craftsman toiling away in a workshop ever fashioned his wares so carefully. A commanding fable about trespass and reconstruction from a titan of Southern fiction.