Deliverance

Contributed by Thomas, gr. 12, Jan. 2019




This thriller by poet James Dickey tells the tale of four white collar city slickers who spend their weekend canoeing through the woods in the hopes of experiencing an invigorating nature retreat before the area is renovated. What they find instead is grisly horror at the hands of mentally unstable forest dwellers whose intentions are so grim that the thought of describing their actions in detail makes me sick.

While I did enjoy the book, I felt that it took significant time to get interesting. Dickey’s career as poet is on clear display in terms of the prose, but the actual conversations that the characters have -- specifically, Ed and Lewis --   I found to be somewhat irritating. The macho, weekend-warrior attitude of Lewis in particular, felt grating, since I’ve never been fond of survivalist nuts; especially egotistical, phaux-philosophical ones.

Nevertheless, once the novel truly becomes a thriller, it does a fine job of raising tension and inspiring uneasiness in the reader. This is accomplished mostly by Dickey’s aforementioned prose, which manages to make a dark, gritty, down-and-dirty novel feel like poetry at times. This grimy romanticism is incredibly engaging and helped me get through the novel. It also has some strong ethical dilemmas for the protagonists as more intense measures must be taken as events unfold.

While I had problems with some attitudes that the characters held, I nevertheless enjoyed Deliverance and would recommend it to readers looking for some tense and at times hard-hitting adventure.