Well you certainly don’t read a David Joy book, looking for an uplifting experience. To say the characters in this book are broken, is a dire understatement. I don’t know these people, I don’t know people who know these people. I went to western Kentucky and eastern West Virginia way back in 1997, and remember thinking these places look like the land that Time forgot. They were beyond depressing. And this was before Meth and Oxy, and heroin had further ravaged these places.
So why 5 stars for this book?
Because Davis Joy- the Author, has a way with words, think James Lee Burke, the writing is that good. You are so perfectly and seamlessly planted into this world, a world of a thoroughly broken young man Thad, who is further shattered and destroyed after serving in Afghanistan, whose mother-April has never loved him, and hasn’t hidden her resentment for him, ever. A woman who is used and beaten- physically, mentally, and emotionally by everyone whom she has ever been involved with. These two are joined by Aiden a childhood friend who moved in with Thad after watching his father murder his mother, and then blow his own brains out.
But oh my god, the writing is amazing.
Read this author, he is that good.
( )

Why didn't he go back to get Eberto? It's true, that he remembered the little girl at the door in the apartment building where Eberto lived, but he could have found a way to lure Eberto away from there, and then trash him?

The protagonist, Aiden, and his friend Thad, do meth. Meth is a really nasty drug. It's the poor man's cocaine.
When I was in my twenties, I worked in a Mexican bar restaurant, as a bartender. Many people that frequented that bar, were either dealing and or using (cocaine, mostly), and often carried guns stuck in their back waistbands. The owner was an old dealer, who had put his head down and quit doing big business. Still, there were plenty of narcotics officers working undercover in and around that bar. It taught me a lot and I worked hard to stay out of trouble.

Thad and Aiden grew up together. Aiden's father killed his mother, and then turned the gun on himself when he was just a little kid. Thad's mother and stepfather let him move in to a trailer on their property with Thad.
They are partners in crime. They used to work construction, but when the bubble burst in 2008, their construction jobs fizzled out, many of them going to immigrants that came and worked those jobs for less money. The protagonist has a chip on his shoulder about this.
They strip a half-finished, now abandoned House of its copper wiring (one of their regular gigs), fence it for about $250, and go buy some meth with that.
They've just gotten high when the dealer, Wayne, starts playing with a gun. He points it at Aiden and Aiden and tells him if he points it at him again, he will shove the gun down his throat.
" 'just calm down. Ain't a thing in it.' Wayne cocked the hammer and raised the pistol to his temple. He pulled the trigger and the far side of his face blew off. A thrash of blood, chunks like grayed hamburger, let loose across the room. His arms dropped to his sides, his right hand still clutching the Colt, and he held there for a second or two before he toppled stiff as a tree face first into the coffee table, rapping the bridge of his nose on the way to the floor."

So now Thad and Aiden go through his house, steal all of his cash and his large stash of meth (that Wayne manufactured in his own house):
"There were two Ziploc bags filled just as heavy with Crystal as the one Aiden and Thad had taken. Three rolls of money, Bills coiled and banded as wide as beer cans, separated the two bags from a handful of small, square packs already weighed and measured for sale. There were 14 or 15 g ready to serve to any tweaker who had a buck fifty to blow. Aiden was no good at math, but if every one of those packs was a gram, and if both of those bags plus the one they already stole each held an ounce, then Wayne Bryson was sitting on nearly a quarter pound of methamphetamine when he put that pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. They'd never get top dollar, but with that cash and that dope, there was more than 10,000 in drugs and money."
If they had a hard life before, now they're really in for it.

Thad's mom April was raped when she was 18 years old, in a church, by the deacon. The boyfriend she was going with in high school denied that it was his, but also cruelly denounced her.
Aiden ended up becoming April's lover (yes, she's old enough to be his mother) when Thad went away to iraq. One day she told him the story about the deacon.
One of the things April liked to do was look up her old friends on facebook, the ones who had turned their backs on her when she was raped and became pregnant. I believe she enjoyed seeing what happened to her ex-boyfriend:
"... Turned out Ron Schiele's life hadn't wound up so peachy, after all. He drank himself out of that track scholarship in just under a semester and was back home working in the paper mill before Thad cut his first tooth. The trophy wife he scooped up at 20 didn't look so good at 40. The seven boys his wife gave him reaped hell on her body, and April figured that girl had either grown udders after the third one or more than likely her titties warped into something out of national geographic. Ron hadn't aged well either. He was losing his hair and his teeth were bad and he'd eaten himself into a caricature of the war on poverty. Not even the insulin could save him now. He'd resorted to prayer from 'friends,' and April laughed at his status: 'going to the doctor tomorrow to see if they'll have to take my leg. Please pray.' She 'liked' it."

I can relate. I'll try to refrain from telling my own stories of being excluded from the in crowd in high school because my father moved us all over the place, and I was always "the new kid." But there's a certain German word that describes how you feel when you see those people that treated you like a fifth wheel either dead or unrecognizable as the Young beautiful popular people they were at 17 and 18.
I believe the word is schadenfreud.

This was pretty good. ( )

This was phenomenal story all the way through. Don't come into a David joy novel without expecting every single character to be broken all to shit, because that's what the man excels in...broken people begging and stealing and crying out for redemption.

David Joy, for me, is like a darker, grimmer John Hart. They both write beautifully, and see the world through mostly cynical eyes, but damn, can they tell a story.

The only thing that had me pulling a star off this one was the lack of a specific ending. And I'm not talking the last bit, I'm talking the bit before the last bit (yeah, I ain't gonna spoil the novel, so you'll have to read it to get what I'm talking about here).

It was a small flaw in an otherwise stunning novel. ( )

This was a really good book. I actually didn’t plan to read this book when I did but when I had it off the shelf and my eyes landed on the first page, I didn’t want to put it down. This book starts out incredibly strong and kept me turning pages as quickly as I could until the very end. I am so glad that I picked this book up when I did.

If you are looking for a book that will leave you with a smile on your face, this isn’t that book. This book is dark, gritty, and full of violence. It is the story of two men who are shaped by things that are outside of their control and just how far they can be pushed. As the book opens, we see Aiden’s father kill his mother and then himself. He eventually comes to live with his friend Thad, a boy that nobody ever really wanted. Jobs are scarce and options are limited so Aiden and Thad do what they need to in order to have enough money to get by and secure their next high. When Aiden and Thad find themselves in a situation to get a step up, they jump on it but things go wrong almost immediately. It was rough watching these two men navigate the things that were thrown at them and I wondered just how far they were willing to go.

The writing was superb. I was taken by this story and thought that the descriptions really helped to bring the story to life. Even when the characters were making poor choices, I understood what brought them to the decisions that they made. I felt their desperation to find a way to a better life. There were many moments in this book that made me think.

I would recommend this book to others. This was a violent, dark book that explored just how far the bonds of friendship can be stretched. I would mention that there is an animal death that may bother some readers. I cannot wait to read more of David Joy’s work. ( )

The Weight of This World by David Joy is a gritty and somewhat dark novel about three people who are trying to escape their unhappy lives.

In the poverty-stricken Appalachians, Thad Broom, his mom April Trantham and childhood friend Aiden McCall are attempting to change their lives. Thad is an Afghanistan veteran who is fed up with the snail's pace of the VA and unable to forget what happened during his tour, he relies on alcohol and meth to keep his demons at bay. April is finally free of her abusive husband but she has been unable to move past the damage wrought by the circumstances of Thad's conception or her parents' and the townspeople's reaction to her unwed pregnancy. Despite his own tragic past, Aiden is trying his best to live an honest life but the downturn in the economy leaves him struggling to find a job. He is also trying to keep Aiden from self-destructing after their drug dealer dies and they make the decision to claim his stash of drugs, cash and weapons. In an ever increasing downward spiral fueled by lack of sleep and too much alcohol and meth, Thad makes a terrible mistake that Aiden desperately tries to fix but can he save his friend from himself?

While at one time Aiden had a loving family, Thad was never that lucky. April never made any secret that she loathed her son and with her blessing, her husband set him up in his own trailer on their property when he was a child. After Aiden runs away from foster care, Thad convinces April to make take the necessary steps for him to stay with them and the two boys are thick as thieves even after Thad joins the Army. Aiden remains living on the property and working in construction until the housing market crash puts him out of work. He is still managing to hold it together even though he is not exactly making an honest living. After he returns from Afghanistan, Thad refuses to get help for his PTSD and instead chooses to self-medicate with alcohol and meth. Following the death of her husband, April is making plans for her future that will impact both Thad and Aiden if they come to fruition.

After the shocking death of their drug dealer, Aiden and Thad make a split second decision to steal his stash but things quickly go downhill when Thad invites a couple of girls to party with them. Unable to keep Thad under control, Aiden eventually carries through with their original plan to profit off their newfound windfall. However, nothing goes as planned for either men and their situation quickly goes from bad to worse. Will either of them find a way out from under the crushing weight of their bad choices and abject poverty?

The Weight of This World is a harsh and violent novel that is a heartbreakingly realistic portrait of life in rural America. The characters are difficult to like (even though it is impossible not to feel sympathy for Aiden) and while they are trapped by their own poor choices, they are also victims of circumstances that are out of their control to some degree. David Bell is a gifted writer who exposes the darker side of life but in doing so, he educates readers about how difficult it is to make a living in economically depressed areas in the United States. A very worthwhile read that is quite thought-provoking and very poignant. ( )