More often than not, the writing of David Joy is described as country noir/rural noir/grit lit or some version of that, but his writing is much, much more and especially in his last two novels When These Mountains Burn and Those We Thought We Knew.

Like so many of the premier southern writers, Joy, like William Gay and Daniel  Woodrell, are so good at lush descriptions with sparse word usage. 

The reason I bring up Joy is that within his last two books, he does such a fabulous job of taking what seems like subtle concepts on the surface and writing about them in such a broader sense.

For example, in When These Mountains Burn, he deals with how technology has changed everything in a humane world and what it means to lose the ties that actually bind us with those things of superficiality that truly mean little but do so much seemingly intangible damage - and too often, right beneath our noses and in ways that we not only ignore but miss altogether.

In the forthcoming Those We Thought We Knew, wow. I wish I could discuss the subtle thing he focuses on in one of the main plotlines, but that would require a spoiler.  But when one reads about it, on its face, it seems to be one of those things that at first seem to lack true importance, while upon more thought, this subtle thing grows exponentially in not only importance but understanding.

I guess one way to describe the beauty of his writing is to imagine a butterfly fluttering around some distance away where one can't see the beauty and complexity of the design of the butterfly until it is up close - that the more you examine this creature up close, the more you see.