Green River Rising (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Tim Willocks
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The late twentieth century
- Setting: East Texas
- Principal Characters: Ray Klein, Juliette Devlin, John Campbell Hobbes, Claude (Claudine) Toussaint, Neville “Nev” Agry, Henry Abbott, Earl “Frogman” Coley, Hector Grauerholz
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Freedom, Prisoners, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Race, Murder or homicide, Psychology or psychologists, Doctors, Rape, Violence
- Locales: Texas
Tim Willocks prefaces his novel with a quotation from William Shakespeare’s Richard II (c. 1595-1596): “I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world.” His fictitious Green River State Penitentiary in East Texas—overcrowded, seething with racial hatred, ready to explode—is intended as a microcosm of the United States, if not the entire shrinking, overpopulated globe.
The reader does not have to turn many pages to realize that Willocks is an exceptionally intelligent, well-educated, and talented author. His descriptions and...
[The entire page is 1783 words long]
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