Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash

Book Review by Ross McIndoe | 08 Jul 2016
Book title: Above the Waterfall
Author: Ron Rash

If Tommy Lee Jones’ character in No Country for Old Men had been able to see out his final days on the force without the interruption of a bowl-cut-wearing death figure, it might have played out a lot like Above the Waterfall.

Les is an Appalachian sheriff in the home stretch of his career, looking only to see out the final weeks and pass on the mantle without anyone he cares about ending up dead or in jail. He mediates between the high school friend who dragged himself up from nothing and the old man who can’t stand to see the little he has left taken away, trying to protect those on a bad road from hurting themselves and those too far gone from hurting anyone else. His self-proclaimed accomplice, closest friend and partner-in-narration Becky works as a park ranger – she writes the beauty she finds there into Whitmanesque verses, trying to ignore the needles discarded in the bushes.

There’s a slowness and a space in the way Rash writes, the essence of a landscape dominated by vast mountains and an openness that can only be traversed slowly, deliberately. A quiet, often dark but gently hopeful meditation on age and nature amidst a cast of characters enduring bravely on as the society around them continues to decay.

Out now, published by Canongate, RRP £14.99