Quatro alchemizes gloomy subject matter...into transcendent beauty ... Rather than pitting these seeming polarities against each other, Quatro skillfully mines the gray areas between them, the realms of ambiguity that are far more indicative of the human experience ... Theologically avant-garde and emotionally supple.
Quatro embroiders a fragile and very sweet relationship between the outcasts ... Quatro is a rare novelist for whom a religious belief in good and evil is not merely a plot device but a genuine guide to describing reality. The striking final section of the novel is narrated from the omniscient point of view of the devil ... Intimate.
I can’t shake the sense that the pages feel warm to the touch. I see, in my mind’s eye, her sentences threaded with muscle and sinew, letters glistening with sweat and blood ... The structure of Two-Step Devil gestures to its characters’ painful and disrupted histories through its own resistance to teleology.
Quatro’s first two books, then, explore in various ways the relationship between faith and desire, and there is nothing straightforward about her treatment of either. Her new novel, Two-Step Devil, stretches her canvas much wider. The themes of family and faith are very much present, and we grow even more familiar with the Lookout Mountain region that has become Quatro’s postage stamp. Her ambition is large, and religious belief still frames that ambition ... Quatro is never sentimental. One of the achievements of Two-Step Devil is the way the encounter with the young girl leads the Prophet forward, not entirely out of his delusional visions but away from their dominance and toward a simpler sublime ... She will not let us have the happy ending we might prefer. The words that end this morally difficult, emotionally devastating account of a young foster child sound like an accusation but feel like a plea. 'This is a story we all know,' Quatro writes, as we tumble where we hoped the story wouldn’t go. 'Don’t you dare call it a crime.' There is something startling in that direct address, something moving in the assertion of collective ownership, collective responsibility.
We find ourselves clinging to visions of success and hope but are confronted by reality, and this juxtaposition is what makes Two-Step Devil not only a darkly humorous and insightful novel, but a dramatic tragedy. We are presented with brightness and shadow and must turn from one to face the other. It is a choice we cannot make for ourselves ... While Quatro’s novel is short, its diversity of narrative techniques and detailed character portraits make the story feel well-rounded and robust ... Quatro chooses a nuanced portrait focusing on inner humanity, rather than a purely voyeuristic or charitable approach ... If there is an answer to the rural American question in terms of politics and representation, Quatro does not pose it, but she does shed light on the impact of years of ignorance, and how those we choose to ignore will nevertheless persist.
A gripping tale that plays with form as much as point-of-view to deliver an enrapturing story. This blistering yet tender work of speculative fiction does not seek to condemn, but instead expands the conversation into the dark crevices where religious zealotry and mental health meet the perceptions of good and evil.
The ending, with a special kind of forked alternative, is devastating precisely because we see it coming as clearly as the Prophet sees his visions. A spectacular masterpiece.
Quatro’s characters are beguiling, and Two-Step Devil is often tender ... Quatro is a pioneering writer for a new South, our patron saint of Southern discomfort.
...powerful in a manner that balances extremes --- quiet moments, horrific violence, heartbreak, joy, self-discovery and fate. Both Winston and Michael are very finely drawn and totally unforgettable, set in a tale that is timely and timeless. The Prophet’s life work, like that of the real-life Armstrong, is fascinating and frightening, gentle and commanding. Michael is singular, but still her story is all too familiar. Quatro’s book is emotionally difficult, incredibly compelling and always beautiful. She has penned a novel of dark realism and dreamy insight, struggle and possibility.
In her previous work Quatro has dramatized the skirmishing desires of body and soul, and she continues to plumb those themes here. There are faint echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain. But like the Prophet’s singular visions, her literary meditations are hers and hers alone: Two-Step Devil quickens suspense right through to the last page, her sentences taut yet beautifully made, her political content subtle, her compassion resonant.
Quatro daringly explores the evils and mercies, large and small, that steer the courses of human lives. A searing and innovative allegory for our turbulent times.
