A mixed bag, but one with a lot more hits than misses. Like a 4:1 ratio. So not that mixed - there are just a few bad (or, more accurately, not-as-good) pieces in there.

Here’s the key to navigating around them: avoid the Proudfoot stories unless you like folksy bullshit. My tolerance for it is quite high, and there is still quite a bit of merit to these stories in the humor they inspire, but they become extremely repetitive, especially once you notice that they all end with Minnie reminiscing about her husband. “Watch With Me” is easily the worst story in this collection, simply because of how long it runs and the anticlimax it concludes with.

However, “The Solemn Boy” is quite good, and stands toe-to-toe with this collection’s best stories. “The Hurt Man,” especially, stopped me dead in my tracks. It’s the first story here, and packs such a whallop that I said to myself, “Damn, this is good.” “Pray Without Ceasing,” “Thicker than Liquor,” “The Boundary,” the title story, and “Fidelity” are also highlights.

Berry’s fiction is a little like Faulkner’s in that he too centers it all around the life of a fictional place, and the lives within. Names recur, genealogies progress, the landscape changes slowly and painfully. Unlike Faulkner, however, Berry uses this place to ground the reader in a world of fundamental goodness. He has faith in humanity that Faulkner - who, despite his being perhaps the most important American writer of the 20th century, was limited by his cynicism - could never muster. If the two of them combined, they'd probably be the best writer ever.