Against the Country

Beginning with his parents' decision to move away from the corrupting influences of town, and to settle instead in rural Virginia, Metcalf's narrator leads the reader through a gallery of scabrous youths and callous adults driven mad by the stubborn soil of the New World. Eloquently misanthropic, the narrator of AGAINST THE COUNTRY fully inhabits the style of the old timer's winding yarn even as he sabotages all that the forces of provincialism stand for from within. For it is through this deft and self-destructive tone that it becomes clear that the land itself, from dirtyards to farms and forests, is not mere backdrop but the living, breathing, menacing influence behind each and every inhabitant's hardscrabble existence.