Not everybody wants to read a book about a God-struck South Georgia taxidermist, but if you pick this one up and get through the first few pages of exactly replicated, below-the-gnat-line, mushmouth drawl, you’ll be caught up in the world of Ansel Bragg—a world pretty much limited to Utinahica, GA… Ansel runs the Hide ’n Skeet Taxidermy and Gun Range in Utinahica, supported by a cast of finely drawn characters who amble in and out of the action… These people are Middle Georgia hicks, it is true, but the power of Hollingsworth’s writing is such that Ansel encompasses “the human heart in conflict with itself” as fully as anybody in Yoknapatawpha or Milledgeville.
The plot is simple: Ansel gets caught up in a masterpiece of his taxidermy art that ultimately runs him afoul of God and man, as well as the natural world… Hollingsworth’s words spin their magic over us so that (his characters) rise into the realm of great literature, because this becomes not just a story, but life itself. Our own lives, our own world hang in the balance, along with the fate of Ansel Bragg.
John Douglas Hollingsworth has jumped off the subway and hit us upside the head with the human condition.
This book is layered, and it goes deep.
Source: FLAGPOLE MAGAZINE