Southern Nights

Barry Gifford''s three Southern Gothic novels, Night People, Arise and Walk, and Baby Cat-Face, may be among the weirdest and best of Gifford''s novels for their sheer velocity - the copious, raw violence; the invented religions and gods that make people do things; and how the horrors somehow cohabit - affably - with the genuine pathos and loveliness of the unforgettable characters that live in these books and the things they say so easily that we''ve never heard anyone say before.