this was recommended to me in the RA group when i was whining about wanting more books like winter's bone and dogs of god and gritty appalachia stuff like that. 
 this is not as dark as either of those books, the stakes of survival are lower, but it is still a book i would recommend. as a readalike, it seems closer to Garden Spells, which i have not read, but have been assured is a contemporary magical realism masterpiece. there are definitely things that happen to characters in this novel that i do not wish to happen to me, but this is more like dark women's fiction than the soul-crushing despair of the stuff i have been craving. 
 but again - i liked it - this will not be a negative review!! 
 i particularly liked the structure of it; each section is narrated by one or two different characters whose stories, when pieced together, reveal all the secrets of several inhabitants of the lonely mountains of tennessee, most of which revolve around one girl, myra lamb. the story weaves through four generations of magic and violence and madness, and provides plenty of atmospheric detail of the land and the people's relationship to the land. 
 some of the reviews on here complain that it is confusing. i don't know what to say to that. it's not really confusing at all. i shrug the same way i shrugged when oprah chose one hundred years of solitude for her book club. oprah - you are just gonna frustrate some people with that one. they have the same naaaames but they are different characters! it is not a mass-appeal book. it would be, if more people read more and were comfortable with the nonlinear and the trickery. but you can't go from recommending alice hoffman and bret lot and then go right into the marquez without pause. you are bound to lose a few along the way. 
 there is some great storytelling in this book, some lovely incidents that are all pretty much tinged with sadness. i look forward to whatever her follow-up will be and maybe it will be more desperate and more heartbreaking, the way it needs to be for cold coldhearted me.