If this is the first book by Mr Pollock you read you will think this is a vile hellish descent into American rural lowlife but fans of the previous two will be amazed that some of the characters are actually nice and some of them are allowed to feel ...er, what's the word.... Wait....oh yes...happy. Compared to the two previous Pollocks, this is Little House on the Prairie featuring Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm on guest vocals. 
 The story we have been told many times before - dirt-poor farm boys stumble into a brief, violent life of crime and get their comeuppance. Along the brain-damaged blood-daubed way we have a motley of fun characters ("Ells, you're talkin' about a man who once ate a dog turd at Jack Eliot's fish fry for a pint of moonshine") with an enticing range of physical peculiarities (unpleasantly large private parts, goiter the size of a tennis ball, etc) and a lipsmacking relish for filth. For instance 
 Matilda remembered [her mother]saying, as she glanced around at the black mold on the walls and the ossified pile of gray dog shit lying on top of the ripped mattress, "So this is what the end of the line looks like." 
 Oh yeah, later in this chapter this mother tries to get a local pimp to buy her 12 year old daughter. 
 "How many girls ye got now?" 
 "Three, but the one's not working out. Can't get her to take a bath. If ye didn't know better you'd think she had the rabies." 
 Yes, that's the general drift of things in a Donald Ray Pollock novel, even if this is the most light-hearted thing he's ever written, to the point where I slightly think he's losing his edge. Well, I mean to say, there are jokes and comedy in here : 
 He was right on the verge of finishing his first original composition, a slow, mournful piece in eight movements meant to capture the educator's dread of returning to the classroom after the bliss of the summer break, tentatively titled "Might as Well Hang Myself". 
 And 
 After being involved professionally with children for so many years, he found it difficult to trust anyone who might possibly have been one in the past. 
 After taking a month to hack & hew my way through Vanity Fair the three day rush of The Heavenly Table was this reader's version of a dog sticking its head out of the car window and the wind dragging its jowls into a big goofy grin. 
 3.5 stars, but I'm hoping Pollock gets back to total bleakness next time round.