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Set in the same fictional Miramichi community as the author's earlier books Nights Below Station Street and Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, the seventh novel by David Adams Richards is driven by Bines's attempts to better himself and take care of his young son, who suffers from leukemia. It's clear that few of his associates or relatives want Bines to succeed at changing his lot. For Vera, a mean-spirited woman with intellectual pretensions, Bines exists only as a case study for her next book. As Richards writes with dry irony, "she had convinced herself that she could expose this pattern than anyone else, show his kind of male violence, show the broader scope of such violence and how it 'impacted' on children and women. 'Impacted' being the new word of choice for her at this moment." Though Bines's interviews with Vera leads him to believe she cares about him, she has as much concern for his well-being as Gary Percy Rils, a criminal with whom Bines has already been involved in several deaths and who's back in town to do some more damage.
Through all this, Bines doesn't seem bad so much as bewildered, an impression enhanced by his habit of repeating phrases as he talks. ("Nice dress ya got there--nice dress," he says upon meeting Vera's daughter. "What's that, yer dolly--got a doll, do ya?") He remains an enigmatic figure, and the constant shifts in perspective and chronology give the sense that this story is being told by many tellers. Indeed, the narrative is being pulled together by a boy who met Bines only once and is fascinated by the myths that surround this doomed man. Richards's prose is characteristically lean yet he's able to convey a wide range of conflicting interpretations of Bines's actions and character. A haunting Maritime crime story, For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down stands with Richards's best work. --Jason Anderson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
–Globe and Mail
“[Bines is] one of the great creations of Canadian literature.…[Richards’] work has a touch of greatness, yielding up reminders, sharp as woodsmoke on an autumn evening, of both the pity and the glory of being human.”
–Maclean’s
“There are few writers anywhere, and certainly none in Canada, who write with the raw power that Richards summons up.…”
–Now
“[His stories] soar with a beauty that breaks your heart.”
–Kitchener-Waterloo Record
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Richards has a knack for writing about bleak, small-town, lower-class lives teetering on the edge of complete disaster. He isn't condescending or judgmental about people most of us probably wouldn't want to spend time with in real life. (That is, in his early fiction--as of 2000's "Mercy Among the Children," which ironically was his first real popular success, he started being more overtly moralistic and preachy. I like his later work much, much less.) The desperation is palpable--as well as the pervasive poverty, violence and alcoholism--yet there's often a sort of transcendence at the end.
Some people might find something this stark and downbeat merely depressing. But if you have a taste for spare, beautifully crafted fiction whose thorny characters and relationships gradually reveal themselves and draw us in through everyday behavior, these books are an acquired taste that can be riveting and exhilarating in their own way. It's not excessive to say that the first 20-plus years of DAR's novels make him worthy of being called the Faulkner of rural New Brunswick.
bob
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