William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams produce a Southern lovechild brother to Cormac McCarthy and from this we get… And the Ass Saw the Angel.

Gothic. Dark. Crazy. Bizarre. Innovative. All words you’d easily associate with Nick Cave’s compelling music, and all words you’d definitely associate with his compelling first novel.

The story is everything you’d imagine it to be from Cave – southern gothic madness with more than a touch of the carnal, religion, cruelty and gore. Euchrid Eucrow is a mute in the 1950s South, who becomes increasingly the focus of the hatred and violence of first his parents and then his whole town. Eventually he exacts his “terrible vengeance”.

The language is fantastic (in the sense of being bizarre and fanciful) and crazy, but with a rhythm that allows you to slip into the novel and not leave until the very end. No, it’s not easy – archane and interspersed with liberal Biblical references, there’s also a tendency to drift towards parody, however this drift is mostly smartly cut short by the sheer relentlessness of the story. 

Put on your favourite Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums (make sure you include Red Right Hand and The Mercy Seat for full effect) and read from beginning to end. Cave’s long awaited second novel (The Death of Bunny Munro) is due out this September – I’ll be first in the queue.

P.S. And the Ass Saw the Angel has also just been reissued by Penguin in it’s Popular Penguins edition.