Industry Reviews
"The Maid's Version is one more resplendent trophy on the shelf of an American master."--William Giraldi, The Daily Beast---
"The Maid's Version is able to tell a community's history in stunning second-, third-, and even fourth-hand recollection."--Mesha Maren, LA Review of Books
"The Maid's Version is stunning. Daniel Woodrell writes flowing, cataclysmic prose with the irresistible aura of fate about it."--Sam Shepard---
"The Maid's Version will sweep readers away."--Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today---
"A distinctive blend of lush metaphor and brisk storytelling."--Laura Miller, Salon---
"Further proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrell is a writer to cherish."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times---
"In fewer than 200 pages, but with a richness of theme and character worthy of the weightiest Victorian novel, Woodrell brings West Table to life in the varied experiences of its sons and daughters. "--Wendy Smith, Washington Post---
"Throughout this remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our own."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR Books---
"Woodrell captures the run-down, put-upon underbelly of America better than anyone, because he knows it better than anyone."--Benjamin Percy, Esquire.com---
"You might have seen Jennifer Lawrence's breakout role in Winter's Bone, but did you know the movie is based on a novel by the audaciously talented Woodrell? The author of nine widely-praised novels is sometimes described as a master of Ozark noir, but his gripping narratives and pitch-perfect language transcend genre."--Reader's Digest, "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now"
Editors' Choice, Times Book ReviewA Best Book of 2013, Slate A Best Book of 2013, Washington PostAn NPR 2013 "Great Read"Winner of the 2014 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for FictionA Top Five Book of the Year, Kansas City StarA Best Book of 2013, St. Louis Post DispatchKirkus Reviews selection for the Best Books of 2013A Best Book of 2013, Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)An Irish Times Book of the YearAn Irish Mail on Sunday Book of the YearA Favorite Book of 2013, National Post (Canada)One of Amazon's Top 10 Best Books of the MonthAn Amazon Best Book of the YearA Best Work of Fiction in 2013, Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal---
"Woodrell's language echoes melodically with the vernacular of the Ozarks, traces of folk song, the cadences of the Bible. Sometimes he offers, seemingly with little effort, as if from a bottomless repository, pithy similes. This of Alma: "grief has chomped on her like wolves do a calf". At other times, sentences leisurely unspool: "The Missouri river floated sixty yards from the street, and there was a small crotchety tavern on the corner." [Woodrell] belongs within a great, predominantly male tradition of American writing that stretches back to Mark Twain and runs on through Willa Cather, William Faulkner, James Dickey, Larry McMurtry to Cormac McCarthy. From the vantage of their willed exile they have produced, down the generations, some of their country's finest fiction and poetry."--Peter Pierce, the Australian
