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    Where All Light Tends to Go
    Where All Light Tends to Go
    Where All Light Tends to Go
    Audiobook7 hours

    Where All Light Tends to Go

    Written by David Joy

    Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DEVIL'S PEAK—starring Billy Bob Thornton, Robin Wright, Hopper Penn, and Jackie Earle Haley!

    In the country-noir tradition of Winter's Bone meets Breaking Bad, a savage and beautiful story of a young man seeking redemption—a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

    The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically organized meth ring, with local authorities on the dime to turn a blind eye to his dealings. Having dropped out of high school and cut himself off from his peers, Jacob has been working for this father for years, all on the promise that his payday will come eventually.  The only joy he finds comes from reuniting with Maggie, his first love, and a girl clearly bound for bigger and better things than their hardscrabble town.

    Jacob has always been resigned to play the cards that were dealt him, but when a fatal mistake changes everything, he’s faced with a choice: stay and appease his father, or leave the mountains with the girl he loves. In a place where blood is thicker than water and hope takes a back seat to fate, Jacob wonders if he can muster the strength to rise above the only life he’s ever known.


    “Remarkable...This isn’t your ordinary coming-of-age novel, but with his bone-cutting insights into these men and the region that bred them, Joy makes it an extraordinarily intimate experience.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

    “Lyrical, propulsive, dark and compelling. Joy knows well the grit and gravel of his world, the soul and blemishes of the place.”—Daniel Woodrell
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Audio
    Release dateMar 3, 2015
    ISBN9780698190252
    Author

    David Joy

    David Joy is the author of When These Mountains Burn (winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award), The Line That Held Us (winner of the 2018 Southern Book Prize), The Weight of This World, and Where All Light Tends to Go (Edgar finalist for Best First Novel). His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of publications, and he is the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey and a coeditor of Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing. Joy lives in Tuckasegee, North Carolina.

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    Reviews for Where All Light Tends to Go

    4/5

    128 ratings20 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Though a decent read, this book was painfully predictable and had a few too many story lines going on that really didn't do much for the plot as a whole. It did have all the typical themes of most modern, southern literature: drugs, family conflict, nefarious doings, problems with the law, etc.

      Overall, it wasn't terrible, but I definitely wouldn't say it's something I'll be re-reading or keeping on my bookshelf.
    • 4/5
      A finalist for the 2015 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy is an intense Red-Neck Noir that is harsh, evocative and powerful. The author sets his story in the North Carolina mountains and as Jacob McNeely’s story unfolds we learn that he lives in a tight, unjust world of crystal meth dealing as run by his clever, cold, and ever watchful father. Jacob desperately needs to escape but the only way out means crossing his father and Jacob doesn’t know anyone who has done that and lived.

      Although Jacob left school and turned his back on his peers to work for his father, he is in love with Maggie, who has been in his life since they were very young. It’s through Maggie that he hopes to find redemption. She is going to be leaving soon, heading toward University and a new life and wants Jacob to go with her. The only thing standing in their way is money, and money is one of the things that his father has withheld from him.

      I found Where All Light Tends to Go a moving account of one young man’s desire for a new life set against the brutal reality of what he currently has. With a father who is a killer and a mother who is an addict, Jacob has never had any choice in who or what he would become. This is the author’s first book and I have previously read his second, The Weight of the World, so I know that this is an author who can deliver a dark and gritty story along with beautiful descriptive writing. I am looking forward to book number three.
    • 5/5
      Damn. What a novel.

      There's certain novels I read and they make me jealous. They go beyond the standard level of entertainment, or thought provocation, and they sweep you up with a level of writing, a level of insight, that you normally don't get.

      And while my thoughts are still provoked, while I am still entertained, there is also a jealousy that sets in. Why can't more writers write like this? Why can't I write like this?

      David Joy has written one of those novels.
    • 4/5
      This book is not something I would have chosen to read. I only read it because it was the choose of a book club I am part of. I was hoping for something along the lines of Ron Rush because he writes dark stories about Appalachia, an area I know well. While the plot was good, I never felt any connection to the main character.

      I did enjoy the descriptions of the area. I know Cashiers well and if the author had not I would not have fooled me. The plot pacing was good and I thought the author did a good job with showing how violence can seep into the very pores of someone.
    • 5/5
      Darkly compelling, "Where All Light Tends to Go" is an impressive debut from author David Joy. The story is told in first-person narrative, by a character who will break your heart. In rural Cashiers, North Carolina, Jacob McNeely is a young man with little choice but to help his father run the family business--a wide-reaching, tightly-run meth ring. While Jacob's father is deeply entrenched in drug dealing, evading and manipulating the authorities, and living the outlaw life, Jacob still hasn't given up all his dreams. His mother is a crazed addict herself, living in the remote cabin where she was exiled by his father. The only tenderness and joy in Jacob's life came from Maggie, his childhood neighbor and high school sweetheart. However, Jacob left school without finishing the tenth grade, and he and Maggie parted ways. He knew she was meant to leave her home and him behind--she was meant for better things. As Jacob becomes more and more swept away by the tide of violence, betrayal, and the desperation of the addicted, he determines to make a last-minute escape. A sweet reunion with Maggie gives him hope for a future together. However, there are elements of evil, as old as time itself, whirling around Jacob as he makes his plans. A long-inevitable showdown is in the works and survivorship is uncertain. Will Jacob follow his heart to freedom, or will the lethal legacy of blood loyalty have its way?

      Book Copy Gratis Amazon Vine
    • 5/5
      David Joy's writing is superbly dark, rich and compelling. His characters are fully developed, and the entire time I was reading this story, I was nervous, worried, and didn't want to put it down. Great read.
    • 5/5
      After reading all three of Joy's novels within a week, I feel like I just escaped from a small town in western North Carolina (just barely). What a wild ride.
    • 4/5
      I picked this up because the author is from an area with which I'm familiar: Jackson County, NC. So reading of Lake Glenville, Sylva, Yellow Mountain Road.... I know these places! But I fall into the dreaded "summer people" catagory, at least in this area.
      Where I grew up, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, there are very similar people and circumstances, but reading fiction, you don't really expect to get the full, dirty, dispairing story. You expect fairy godmothers, the hero to win in the end.... not this time.
      I won't recommend it to folks who don't care for foul language - there's plenty - but I think it was used in character, not frivolously. I think the author just might know these people.
      A few things got to me: our hero is his fther's son, he can't get out, he has no choice - said over & over. I don't believe this, but again, true to character and hey, it's fiction. AND his first - hope he writes more! Meantime, I'll look into some of his local wrinting/non-fiction.
    • 3/5
      Where All Light Tends to Go is David Joy's debut novel. I really enjoyed his second book, The Weight of this World, which was also a dark, crime-ridden tale set in the hardscrabble Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. Where All Light Tends to Go tells the story of Jacob McNeely who, as the son of a prominent meth dealer, deals with being viewed as trash everyday by upstanding folks. His mother is an addict and his father is more dangerous than nurturing and after dropping out of high school, Jacob figures he's trapped in this dead end part of the world forever. But his ex-girlfriend has been accepted to a college way out in Wilmington and he'll do what he can to help her get there. And maybe even dream about joining her.

      So this was a debut novel. While I could see hints of what he'd be able to write just a book later, here the story is simplistic and the characters stay carefully within their assigned stereo-types, from the perfect, pure girlfriend to the slimy lawyer. Jacob had a few moments along the way where Joy seems to be pointing out the naivety of an eighteen-year-old boy's ego and the story itself was certainly fast-paced, but this is clearly the work of someone still learning their craft. Joy will be a writer to watch, but this book is not a strong one.
    • 4/5
      I had a hard time getting into this book and gave up at one point but decided to give it another go. David Joy is a talented writer and tells a powerful story. I felt like the main character was a bit repetitive in his laments; he had a terrible childhood and terrible prospects and I get that, but the reader doesn't need constant reminding to remember or get it. I wanted to shake him and tell him to give it a rest already. The other annoying aspect was the utter belief that there was no escaping his so-called fate. Whatever. Stop moaning and take some action. And just because he finally takes action and it doesn't work out so well for him doesn't mean that was his fate! The author just really had it in for this guy. :) But seriously, this turned out to be a really interesting story and I'm glad I stuck with it. I didn't see the plot twist coming until it was practically on top of me, and I like that kind of surprise.
    • 4/5
      fuuuuuuuuuck
      Oh what a tragedy! This book really got to me. Small town life surrounded by drugs, so believable and so sad. Just wow. Talk about going out in a blaze of glory. . . If you want a HEA this isn't for you.
      4—4.5 stars
    • 3/5
      The lives and deaths and the manner of them in this book are certainly credible enough; we know these things happen. But the characters are not convincing; their feelings, their modes of expression, their acts don't fit together to make consistently believable wholes. Some stylistic choices I also found perplexing and got in the way for me. It was an interesting read, though, for a book club meeting I went to when visiting a friend, and the discussion it provoked made up for whatever lacked in the book itself.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book by a talented writer. David Joy does a spectacular job portraying the despair and contradictions felt by the characters, Appalachian mountain people involved in criminal activities and police who are aiding and abetting or trying to stop said activities. It's not an upbeat book by any means, but the writing is superb, the pace is perfect, the characters are well-developed, and the dialogue seems real. Anyone who thinks life in the mountains of NC and Tennessee is safe and bucolic should take a look at this impressive novel for a dose of reality. Loved it.
    • 3/5
      This is one of those books that I really wanted to like, but it just left me feeling sort of "meh".

      Overall, the book is incredibly bleak, no hope to be found anywhere. There are very few characters with any redeeming qualities, hillbilly meth dealers, crooked cops in on the action, even the "good girl" wasn't so "good", and she was supposed to be the one breaking free. The main character, the narrator of the book, was very inconsistent. His actions, like the nonstop drug use, coupled with his thoughts, just didn't jive.

      I like Southern-Lit, but this one definitely didn't live up to the billing.
    • 3/5
      Jacob McNeely was born to a life of crime. His father is the meth kingpin of Cashiers, North Carolina, and half the county is in a league with him. The other half knows to steer clear. We meet Jacob on the night he would have graduated from high school if he hadn't dropped out and given in to the notion that he had no choice but to inherit the family business. As the book unfolds, we meet the girl Jacob is head over heels for that he didn't break up with so much as set free. We discover his mother, holed up in a shack, who is desperately addicted to the family merchandise. Then, there are the folks that dare to double cross the McNeely family and have to pay the price.

      The more Jacob learns about his father and his merciless ways, the more Jacob knows he's not cut out to follow in his father's footsteps. When he gets another chance to win the girl he loves, Jacob finally sees a way out of the life that is expected of him. Unfortunately, walking away might be harder than even he could ever imagine.

      Where All Light Tends to Go should have been a huge hit with me. I'm fresh from a binge watching of Justified, so backwoods Appalachian criminals are right up my alley. Instead, I found myself disappointed with the book. Joy is a capable writer, but Where All Light Tends to Go seems just a bit disingenuous. Except for a few token country boyisms, if you will, Jacob's narration is almost too well spoken and even a little wooden. When Jacob does stumble into some local vernacular, it smacks of Joy trying too hard to get his character to be a little more down home. It would actually seem more genuine if Jacob referred to pants as pants every once in a great while instead of as britches, and not every police officer has to be referred to as a "bull."

      Jacob faces some considerable struggle in the pages of this book, but for me, Joy missed the mark when it came to garnering my sympathies. Instead, I felt as if I was still watching this narrator from a distance instead of being truly involved in his story, despite the first person narration. All in all, Where All the Light Tends to Go is a competent debut that didn't quite find its voice.
    • 5/5
      If you are looking for an upbeat frothy story this book is not for you. However, if you can take a dark and gritty novel about a young man with an abusive drug dealing father who struggles to save the girl he loves from a nowhere life in rural North Carolina with the redeeming quality that it is very well written - then go for it. There are some very unique characters and bursts of dark humor interspersed throughout. I am looking forward to Mr. Joy's next book as this one is very different.
    • 4/5
      Where all the light tends to go is far, far away from this darkest of Southern Gothic novels. I am a big fan of other authors of this ilk: Larry Brown, Daniel Woodrell (author of Winter's Bone), and especially Ron Rash. There is something about the hollows and cabins that is so alien and fascinating to me. But the change from moonshine to meth culture seems to have destroyed any hidden nobility that might have still run through these refugees of Scotland, Ireland, England. The protagonist, Jacob, is the high school dropout son of a meth dealer (father) and a meth addict (mother). He works for his brutal, abusive father and dreads encounters with his barely-conscious mother. He is also in love with a beautiful blonde stereotypical manic pixie dream girl, with whom he wishes to escape when she leaves for college. Jacob himself makes it clear that there's no way this is going to happen - and then the dead bodies start piling up.

      There is one scene with Jacob and his temporarily sober mother which shines out from all the violence and ugliness - but one passage does not make a novel.
      I wish I could recommend more highly, but maybe next time David Joy will write more nuanced characters and more palatable situations.
    • 5/5
      If you like southern gothic noir, rough violence, spare, powerful writing, with warmth and tenderness as well, you can do no better than this outstanding debut, what an amazing book, easy a top ten for 2015.
    • 5/5
      I was wandering through a bookstore (The Booksellers on Fountain Square in Cincinnati, Ohio) feeling rather homesick in the big city. I was close to home - less than two hundred miles, to be precise - but I felt very out of place in Cincinnati. And then a book spoke to me. No, really, it did. Okay, so maybe the book itself didn't speak to me, but the sticky note on the front of it did.

      "Winter's Bone, Breaking Bad, Cormac McCarthy fans will devour this dark debut novel," the sticky note declared.

      Well, I'd never heard of "Winter's Bone" (which has now made it onto my TBR pile), and I'd never watched an episode of "Breaking Bad." However, I HAD read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and enjoyed it immensely. I stepped a little bit closer, only to discover that the book jacket looked...kind of like home - bleak, run down, with an abandoned house with a sagging roof and a rusted old pickup truck. Hmm. I flipped open the book. And then I was lost.

      Set in Appalachia (HOME! :) ) - Cashiers, North Carolina, to be specific - Jacob McNeely is the son of the local meth dealer and a junkie. Just his last name marks him, and he knows that he'll never get out of Cashiers. His childhood was crap, with the one bright spot being his best friend and first love, Maggie. But Maggie is destined for bigger and better things - college, a career, and a home far away from Cashiers - and Jacob can't offer that. Instead, he gets caught up in a murder set up by his father and his father's henchmen, and it looks like he'll never leave Cashiers free - or alive.

      First off, I loved, loved, loved the writing style of David Joy. It's sparse and just reeks of...home. I mean, I can hear people talking like this in my memories - hell, I talk like this sometimes. So you can really tell that he lives in the area and is familiar with it. And he really draws you into the characters' heads and lives. Even the Cabe brothers, who come across as rather vile, have a "softer" side when the reader learns that they keep dozens of cats - cats that they probably have a difficult time affording to feed.

      There's also a sense of dread just permeating the entire book. Although Jacob desperately wants to get away from his fate, it seems that nothing goes right for him. And, in the end, he is betrayed by one of the few people he thought that he could trust, set up for his father's murder. Sometimes you just can't leave the past, no matter how much you want to, and Jacob illustrates this beautifully. I also like that Jacob, in spite of his harsh upbringing, still has a "soft" side - a side that his father dislikes but his mother, whenever she is off the junk, seems to enjoy.

      I will definitely be picking up more from this author once he writes it!
    • 4/5
      The author's surname is Joy, but there is little to be found in this novel. It is dark and brutal, full of despair and hopelessness, sparked with just a little, maybe, just a little chance of better things to come.

      I like dark books, but I have trouble with violence and cruelty, and this one was almost over the top for me. But it was not consistently violent. There were some truly awful incidents, but chronically violence was not the point of the book.

      Written in first person, protagonist Jacob knows he has to follow his father's footsteps, where law is something to be bought and lawlessness is the traditional way of life. And he loves his childhood friend, Maggie, but also knows she is destined for better things, to get away from the community that sucks humanity out of those who stay. Despite his poor decisions and his fatalistic attitude, I liked Jacob and wanted good things for him.

      “The life I was born into seemed set in stone from the moment my last name was scribbled across my birth certificate. But in a lot of ways I'd come to terms with it. There comes a time when you are so worn that you can't fight that [….] any longer, and so you just surrender.”

      ”Hope and faith are loaded guns.”

      Reflecting on his father's treatment of his drug-addled mother, Jacob thinks, “Loved her too much to give her nothing, but giving her anything at all squared things so he'd never have to love her again.

      This is not a fluffy, feel-good type of book, but it is beautiful in its own way, in its look into the darkness that can live in human souls.

      I was given an advance readers copy of this book for review, and the quotes may have changed in the published edition.