Good, Annoying, Confusing

Well, I just finished Reading Tristan Egolf's Kornwolf: A Novel. I thought it was a very good book, though parts of it were annoying, and the ending was very confusing.

I won't hold the fact that it annoyed me against the book, because what annoyed me probably wouldn't annoy most people. It's a matter of names. Throughout the book, Pennsylvania is referred to as Pennsyltucky, which is a name that generally implies that everyone in the state--outside of Philadelphia--is a bunch of dumb-ass, redneck hillbillies. Sure, I'm not under any illusions that much of the population in my states more rural areas, and smaller towns and cities, is a bunch of dumb-ass, redneck hillbillies--I just have to read the letters column in any local paper to know that--but I'd prefer it if a writer didn't use a slang term as if it were the proper name. I also don't like the way he presented the town names. He used the proper names of the embarrassingly named towns of Blue Ball, Intercourse, and Bird-In-Hand. He misspelled others with more ordinary names as Yorc (York, obviously), Rudding (Reading), Alleytown (Allentown), Horaceburg (Harrisburg), and Philth Town (I'm guessing Philadelphia).

Spoiler Warning: Some of the next paragraph may be considered a spoiler!

Besides that, this is a great story. Owen, an out of work reporter, shows up in rural "Pennsyltucky" to learn boxing and is hired onto the local paper. Soon he gets his hands on the picture of a vaguely Richard Nixon-like monstrosity called the Blue Ball Devil or the Kornwolf. The Kornwolf is an Amish boy named Ephraim. On the nights surrounding the new and full moons, and occasionally at other times, he turns into a werewolf and goes on a rampage. It turns out that Owen's boxing coach, Jack, was the original Kornwolf and was Ephraim's father and also his uncle (remember what I said about hillbillies). In the end, Ephraim goes on a brutal rampage and kills the abusive man who raised him, and several other people. In the end, he is rescued by Jack and whisked away to parts unknown.

The only thing I didn't like was the ending. It left too much unresolved. There is mention made of a mysterious deal between Jack and Owen, but we're never given any details. We're never told what Jack did in Vietnam, though we're definitely intended to want to know. We don't know how Jack overcame his lycanthropy or how he plans to help Ephraim. We're also left wondering what the deal was with Jack's, probably Native American Friend, Scarlet. She is supposedly waiting for Jack in Indiana, which leads me to guess that she's supposed to be a shaman, or something, with werewolf healing abilities. That seems a bit cliched for this book, though.

Despite the ending, I thought this book was great. I give it 4.5 yo-yos.