Holbert's prose crosses the coal-black comedy of Charles Portis with hallucinogenic Denis Johnson, a slapstick of grim manners above a howling abyss that is always audible ... Holbert is a writer known to few outside Washington, but Whiskey arrives with the report of a rifle—a major introduction to the canon of the Pacific Northwest. It is by turns the funniest book I've read in months and the one that left the deepest wounds behind.
...[a] bleak yet emotionally authentic chronicle ... Resplendent descriptions and quick-witted dialogue serve as necessary counterpoint to visceral depictions of violence. The titular libation is both the catalyst of the destruction wrought by each family member and the balm with which each seeks reprieval from pain.
...a violent, gruesome, and beautiful tale that, despite its despondency, is perversely winning ... The violence in this rangy, brilliant narrative is often grotesque, but this excess is tempered by dry humor, wonderful dialogue, and dark wisdom.
The jigsaw structure can frustrate, but Holbert is a canny writer, and soon the finely drawn fragments from the past percolate into 1991’s narrative and go far to explain why the brothers are rolling toward some reckoning. Like Cormac McCarthy, another bard of the modern West’s brutality, Holbert finds beauty and cruelty in the land, in the tease and punch of eloquently elliptical dialogue, and in the way humans struggle for love, self-knowledge, and a grip on life that won’t just burn their fingers ... His characters may well brand a reader’s memory. A gut-punch of a bleak family saga that satisfies on many levels.
