Southern descent

Echoes of Dickens in deft satire about status and ambition within a Kentucky family.

- BY TIM UPPERTON

In Lee Cole's second novel, two half-brothers return to their mother’s home in nowheresville, Kentucky. Emmett has drifted into a job at a nearby massive warehousing and distribution centre called Tempo, a fictional stand-in for Amazon. Mass-produced goods arrive from far-flung places, only to be sent away somewhere else - a bit like Emmett himself, who has drifted around the US South, doing minimum-pay work and reading self-help guides on how to become a successful screenwriter. Joel, on the other hand, is living a budget version of Emmett's dream; on the back of a successful academic work (Going South: The Descent of Rural America), he is taking a break from his university post in New York to teach for a semester back home.