A Little Blood and Dancing

A Novel

By: Tyler Parker

Narrated by: Jenny Pudavick

It’s a tale as old as time: doomed romance, bloody revenge, fast food, and the voice of God. Welcome to Tyler Parker’s Oklahoma, and one of the most anticipated debut novels of the year from one of our best, funniest new writers.

Check out Sylvia Table: he drives a seafoam-green 1968 Ranchero, owns a badass sword, and is one dead uncle away from an inheritance that should set him and the love of his life, Lady Sixkiller, on the road to easy living and the family she’s always wanted. Sure, he may not be cut out for any kind of conventional job, but as long as Lady can hold things down as a waitress until rich old Methuselah shuffles off this mortal coil, what’s the big deal? Yes, things are looking good for Sylvia Table, aka Big Noise, aka Grandest Poobah, aka Big Quiche.

But uncles don’t always die on schedule, maternal clocks keep ticking with increasing urgency, doing crimes beats working for a living, and the past refuses to stay buried. In this case, the past takes the form of Priscilla Blackwood, a woman locked in an eternal one-sided conversation with Jesus Christ Himself, and dead set on enacting vengeance for the murder of her father, which she witnessed as a little girl. Whether Table knows it or not, he’s on a collision course with an avenging angel who believes she’s got the Lord on her side.

Combining the linguistic punch of Elmore Leonard, the living landscapes of Cormac McCarthy, and the comic soul of Charles Portis, A Little Blood and Dancing announces Tyler Parker as one of our most extraordinary new voices.

©2023 Tyler Parker (P)2023 Strange Light

Critic reviews

“Broke my heart and hurt my stomach. And I laughed the whole time. Can't stop thinking about it.”
—E.R. Fightmaster, Grey's Anatomy, Shrill

"The hardest task in literature is writing a truly funny book that makes you feel something, not just from the characters and what they do and say, but also from the sentences and how they feel new and full of energy. Only the most ambitious writers even try to do this and it's remarkable and even edifying to see a writer like Tyler Parker do it all with such style." —Jay Caspian Kang, author of The Dead Do Not Improve and The Loneliest Americans, staff writer at The New Yorker

“For as long as I can remember, I've been a hopeless book addict. A good book is one of life’s special pleasures. Tyler Parker has gone and written a great book and I will never forgive him for enabling my addiction.” —Jason Concepcion, writer, host of X-Ray Vision

Wild times of depravity and masculinity

I enjoyed the readers presentation of a meandering tale of a fool who's life is a series of poor decisions.

Well done - but a bit too untethered for my taste.

Well written with extraordinarily developed characters. Strong sense of voice. But a bit too adventitious for my liking, especially with a depressing and sanctimonious for me. But I’m not a great fan of Cormac McCarthy either…

Tedious

The bones of a good book are there. Written in a distinctive voice and captures what feels like an authentic, if hyper specific, slice of culture. But there is very little narrative propulsion - almost nothing happens other than the passing of time. And I found the main characters mostly insufferable, which detracted severely from any emotional payoff. The dialogue tete-a-tete was very grating, at least to me (lost track of how many times I rolled my eyes after a line of dialogue). At one point, Table says "my sarcasm is amazing" and that's a pretty emblematic of why I didn't like this book (it was not in fact, amazing). Theres another point where two characters say "Move" "No" back and forth for over a minute. With that said, the conclusion begins as a revenge climax and pivots interestingly toward generational trauma and leaves the reader in a thoughtful place. I wish this was the focus of the book. Curious what this author does next, just hope he remembers that we don't have to like all the characters, but it helps not to loathe them all too

Wildly unlikeable characters

This author definitely has talent. His imagery was fantastic. And maybe this was on purpose, but wow I couldn't get behind one character in this story. So unlikeable.

Quite the Book

I picked up the book based on a blurb on the title page comparing the author to Cormack McCarthy and Elmore Leonard. I don't know if the comparisons are apt, but they aren't inappropriate. I was quite, quite pleased by the writing.

I've told just about every person I have spoken with this week to read this by book. It's darn fine writing, the characters are interesting, and I regularly found myself laughing.

Only nitpick I have is that the writer doesn't trust us to track who is speaking, so we wound up with "_____ said" constantly, which I found grating. Or maybe it is stylistic and meant to cause a hypnotic effect, who knows. Anyway, it's a nothing complaint, this book really didn't disappoint and I loved every minute of it. Props to the recording artist as well, she nailed it.

i would have preferred this book had been read by the author

the author should have been allowed to read his own book, but it was a great read/listen.