The part of town called Venus Holler is the setting of
Daniel Woodrell's latest book Tomato Red (Henry Holt; $20) and it is this backdrop, more than any other factor, that gives his story a sense of hopelessness in a sexed-out, drugged-out, crime filled world. Venus Holler is part of Flat Table, Missouri, located deep in the Ozarks and decidedly on the wrong side of the tracks. "If a train passed at breakfast time, all the eggs ended up scrambled." By the end of the novel, the characters end up scrambled too.

Sammy Barlach, originally from Blue Knee, Arkansas, stumbles into the world of Venus Holler during a botched robbery attempt. The reason for its failure: he falls asleep in the middle of it. When he is roused, a voice asks him, "Are you dangerous? You look dangerous." This becomes the central question Woodrell tries to answer. Sammy is discovered by Jamalee (Jam) and Jason Merridew, two fatherless siblings in their late teens who bring Sammy back to Venus Holler after attempting a burglary on the same house. This connection begins a solid yet twisted friendship among the three kids.

What Woodrell should be best remembered for is the beautifully painted canvases of poor life in the heavily wooded Ozarks of his native Missouri. He is a master of imagery, concocting such sentences as, "If this house was meat you'd let the dog eat it" and "The kitchen walls had become the color of baloney rind left in the sun."

The dominance of the setting is accentuated by an often incoherent plot with few transitions. Woodrell spins his story in a way that confuses and disorients. He writes in short chapters with abrupt endings and beginnings, enforcing a reading of Tomato Red accented by painfully isolated events -- a moment-to-moment kind of life which may be great to live, but is frustrating to comprehend.

Another part of the novel examines the friction between the poor of Venus Holler and the rich of Flat Table. In one incident, Jam causes trouble during an interview at the posh country club on the other side of town. As she exits the club, a crowd of people emerging from "lush vehicles, mostly big-assed things a sharecropper could've raised his family in" gathers around the precocious red-head (Jam is Sammy's "tomato red"). A man described as "a six-foot piss hard-on" pronounces, "You people are the lowest scum in town." Jason, whom Woodrell continuously praises for his beautiful face and ability to make middle-aged women fall in love with him, replies "I don't think we're the lowest scum in town." The narrator further clarifies, "He didn't argue that we weren't scum, just disputed our position on the depth chart."

Sammy and the Merridews don't know who they are. They despise being laughed at by everyone around them and want to retaliate. They load several pigs onto a truck one rainy night and let them loose on the country club golf course to tear it to shreds. Toward the end of the story, however, when the kids seem to be obviously wronged, they refuse to act up. And they have much to act up against. Their mother Bev is widely known as the town whore and Jason engages in homosexual acts which don't sit well in small-town
Missouri. To further complicate their social position, Sammy's overboard sex drive results in his sleeping with both Jam and Bev.

All the tension of the novel's insides is released at its end. Woodrell creates a set of friends that can't help but reach a snapping point, and the power with which they come undone is impressionable. A final picture of extreme violence provides closure for what seems to be a wishy-washy emotional center in most of his characters.

With the exception of a strong finish, Woodrell's writing style seems to degenerate during the course of the novel. More than anything, it lacks consistency. The interesting speech he employs early such as, "All this made her look hep to it all, jack, and a good bit foreign," slowly vanishes. The first sentence of the novel goes on for a full page, yet never again does Woodrell adopt this run-on approach. He loses much of the spunk and expressiveness that make the opening chapters appealing.