"The raunchy, blue-collar characters in Donald Ray Pollock's debut story collection, Knockemstiff, specialize in messing up." "I would not want to hang out with them. But reading about them is another matter." (continued)

-USA Today

"Knockemstiff is a knockout debut about the forgotten underclass in the Rust Belt...giving voice to their hardscrabble, often violent lives and their obliterated dreams." (continued)

-Seattle Post-Intelligence

"...this is as raw as American fiction gets. It is an unforgettable experience." (continued)

-San Francisco Chronicle

"KNOCKEMSTIFF, Donald Ray Pollock's virtuosic linked-story debut, borrows its name from the author's actual hometown and offers up a profanely comic fictional take on the hangdog, strung-out, beyond-broke trailer-home folks living there. Pollock's tales are spiked with a lurid panache that handily earns its own literary genre: Southern Ohio Gothic."

-Elle Magazine

"Pollock digs down deep under the loamy soil of rural life... until he gets to the place where the bodies are buried." (continued)

-Star Tribune, Minneapolis

"A debut collection of terrifying, darkly funny stories concerning the drug-addled, beaten-down inhabitants of a southern Ohio holler called Knockemstiff." (continued)

-Kirkus Reviews

"A native of Knockemstiff, Ohio, Pollock delivers poignant and raunchy accounts of his hometown's sad and stagnant residents in his debut story collection that may remind readers of its thematic grand-daddy, Winesburg, Ohio..." (continued)

-Publishers Weekly