Gets so close to a fourth star it can smell the new paint job. In fact the plot is totally 5 star - the motivations and machinations of all the characters make complete sense and are a real heartbreaker. The main character, 16 year old Ree Dolly, is great. In the movie, which I came across all of 4 years ago, she's played by none other than Jennifer Lawrence in her first big role, and the movie and Jennifer both knocked me flat on my back then. It's a must see. If any book was filmed exactly right it's thisn. 
 What nearly defeats this chunk of hick lit is Daniel Woodrell's prose style. He thinks he's the new improved perfect blend of Annie Proulx, William Faulkner and maybe ole Cormac M and some others like that. He's Mcproulkner or sumpin. Here's what I mean: 
 The world seemed huddled and hushed and her crunching steps cracked loud as ax whacks. 
 Little Arthur was a little-man mix of swagger and tongue, with a trailing history of deeds that vouched for his posture. 
 A picnic of words fell from Gail's mouth to be gathered around and savoured slowly. 
 Here, Ree is given some real bad news: 
 There was a sound in Ree's head like a world of zippers zipping shut, and a sudden tilt factor engaged every place she looked. The creek shifted heights in her eyes and swayed overhead floppy as snapped string, the houses beyond skinny as ribs and knotted together in bows, the sky spun upright like a blue plate set on edge to dry. 
 And here's Ree being assaulted violently: 
 Ree felt her joints unglue, become loose, she was draining somehow, draining to the dirt, while black wings fling angles crossed her mind, and there were mutters of beasts uncaged from women and she was sunk to a moaning place, kicked into silence. 
 And later 
 All her aches were joined as a chorus to sing pain throughout her flesh and thoughts. 
 I'm sorry but this strongly reminds me of Doctor Johnson's famous advice to writers: 
 Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. 
 Maybe it's a matter of taste but for me a lot of Mr Woodrell's prose above verges on parody; it's hideously overwrought and self consciously gorgeous. It strikes poses in every phrase. It has the same relationship to the compelling communication of sense and emotion that a catwalk model has to walking in a straight line. 
 About half of the entire short novel is given over to descriptions of the beautiful Ozarks : 
 Disappearing snow left the old tossed stones plain amidst the puny winter weeds and spreading muck. Some stones were stacked two high and some lay in close clusters with stunted oak growing from the narrow spaces between. 
 Not a field or creek or a snowflake passes by without it's nailed to the page. If you like that you'll love Winter's Bone. 
 Such a shame, then. A great - really great - tale of loss and hard-won redemption amidst the vicious but ethical crank-cooks of the Ozarks was very nearly capsized by its mode of telling. If Daniel could only have dialled it down a notch or two.