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Deep Ellum
"Restrained, dark, and strangely silent, this almost unbearably compelling novel reminds me how blood ties can cut as deeply and painfully as broken glass through the foot. If you've ever had a homecoming laced with sadness and longing, you'll relate to it." -- Ottessa Moshfegh
"...stands out as a miniature masterpiece of mood." -- San Diego City Beat
"Hobson is adept at matching mood with setting." -- The Dallas Morning
"Hobson establishes a city that is as lively as Twin Peaks..." --Electric Literature
Listed on Reader's Digest Best Short Books Under 150 Pages
Listed as one of Flavorwire's 10 Must Read Books for March, 2014
Listed as one of Entropy's 10 Best Novels of the First Half of 2014
"...stands out as a miniature masterpiece of mood." -- San Diego City Beat
"Hobson is adept at matching mood with setting." -- The Dallas Morning
"Hobson establishes a city that is as lively as Twin Peaks..." --Electric Literature
Listed on Reader's Digest Best Short Books Under 150 Pages
Listed as one of Flavorwire's 10 Must Read Books for March, 2014
Listed as one of Entropy's 10 Best Novels of the First Half of 2014
120 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2014
3 people are currently reading
763 people want to read
About the author
Brandon Hobson
14Ìýbooks408ÌýfollowersDr. Brandon Hobson is an American writer. His novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and also teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
January 3, 2021
Brandon Hobson, what a writer! I LOOOOOVED , and this early work also showcases the author's immense talent to depict troubled relationships and people under pressure, always finding poetic and nuanced expressions for their grief and inner turmoil and never retreating to clichés or overused tropes. The novella tells the story of 26-year-old Gideon who works odd jobs and drifts through his life in Chicago, until his depressive mother overdoses and he travels back home to - you guessed it - Deep Ellum, a troubled neighborhood in Dallas.
As the story progresses, we learn more about Gideon's childhood, his deceased father, his stepfather, his two siblings and his mother, all of them fighting demons related to precarious life situations, substance abuse, and mental illness (the latter probably at least partly resulting from the first two factors). Gideon also encounters various people who are down and out in his old home quarter, suffering from the effects of poverty, loneliness, and the lack of opportunities.
And yes, Hobson actually once was a social worker, but much like , this does not read like a pamphlet, this is high literature in the realm of social realism. The characters aren't plain victims, many of them aren't even particularly sympathetic - it's the truth and dignity that is found in excellent fiction that renders the text so captivating and exciting. I can't wait for Hobson's upcoming new novel .
As the story progresses, we learn more about Gideon's childhood, his deceased father, his stepfather, his two siblings and his mother, all of them fighting demons related to precarious life situations, substance abuse, and mental illness (the latter probably at least partly resulting from the first two factors). Gideon also encounters various people who are down and out in his old home quarter, suffering from the effects of poverty, loneliness, and the lack of opportunities.
And yes, Hobson actually once was a social worker, but much like , this does not read like a pamphlet, this is high literature in the realm of social realism. The characters aren't plain victims, many of them aren't even particularly sympathetic - it's the truth and dignity that is found in excellent fiction that renders the text so captivating and exciting. I can't wait for Hobson's upcoming new novel .
December 23, 2018
Meet the Grays: there’s Gideon, the middle sibling and Deep Ellum’s narrator; older sister Meg; younger brother, Basille; their mother; and Greg, their stepfather. The bonds among the siblings are tight and strong. The siblings� concerns for each other and for their mother are palpable. Gideon narrates those concerns in his convincing, worried, undramatic voice. We learn that the Gray siblings love each other and their mother: otherwise, why would Gideon uproot his life in Chicago and travel to Dallas out of concern for his mother’s most recent suicide attempt?; otherwise why would Gideon risk his safety by seeking out and confronting Meg’s badass former boyfriend?; otherwise why would Gideon ignore Meg’s past abuse of him?; why, why, why? Drugs, alcohol, and serious family and individual dysfunctions may abound in the Gray family, but they don’t diminish the strength of the Gray family bounds.
Deep Ellum, with Gideon’s and Basille’s music resonating throughout and with its abundant musical references, truly demands its own playlist.
Deep Ellum is a small gem of a novel: Brandon Hobson’s unadorned prose perfectly and credibly reflects a true voice for Gideon. Deep Ellum packs huge emotional wallops, transporting us completely into the small world of this loving, troubled nuclear family. In its own, unexpected way, Deep Ellum can be read as an inspiring novel.
4.5 stars, suffering only in comparison to Brandon Hobson’s later NBA finalist novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking.
Deep Ellum, with Gideon’s and Basille’s music resonating throughout and with its abundant musical references, truly demands its own playlist.
Deep Ellum is a small gem of a novel: Brandon Hobson’s unadorned prose perfectly and credibly reflects a true voice for Gideon. Deep Ellum packs huge emotional wallops, transporting us completely into the small world of this loving, troubled nuclear family. In its own, unexpected way, Deep Ellum can be read as an inspiring novel.
4.5 stars, suffering only in comparison to Brandon Hobson’s later NBA finalist novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking.
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February 14, 2014 Donning Your Sister’s Coat and To Live In Someone Else’s Shoes
After reading Brandon Hobson’s Deep Ellum, I feel a deep sadness for myself + for humanity. Perhaps the most minimal treatment of War + Peace ever. Except there is no war, no excessive Russian names, and no real peace and a few minor disputes here + there that become larger than life and the consequences of life. Hobson’s treatment of the past in literature makes the past last longer than in real life. In real life, one’s memories of the past exist in fragments. I hardly think about the past, only flickering emotions and images –fluttering in and out of the houses of various imaginations. Some do not even belong to me. By reading Hobson’s Deep Ellum � it asks me gently to reach into the Deep Ellum of my memory’s consciousness for their bruised eye that open the lid to the opposite of indifference. In the world where everything gets downplayed, Hobson paints an unlush, un-windwept landscape of family bonding that stirs you awake. Hobson does not blow us away with fancy language or mesmerize us with his linguistic therapeutic unguents. We don’t expect large or vast answers to life’s large conflicts: drugs, depression, incest, dental care. His writing should be a deep sleep, a large fist that comes at you at 200 days per second, slowly, hitting your elastic temple and make you swell like a birthday candle. At the end of the book, the large fist opens like a flower. A flower that talks to you directly and tell you that the little things in life, the gestures of care, despite their unexpected consequences do matter and they open the vast channel of change. His male characters' names are also exquisite.
After reading Brandon Hobson’s Deep Ellum, I feel a deep sadness for myself + for humanity. Perhaps the most minimal treatment of War + Peace ever. Except there is no war, no excessive Russian names, and no real peace and a few minor disputes here + there that become larger than life and the consequences of life. Hobson’s treatment of the past in literature makes the past last longer than in real life. In real life, one’s memories of the past exist in fragments. I hardly think about the past, only flickering emotions and images –fluttering in and out of the houses of various imaginations. Some do not even belong to me. By reading Hobson’s Deep Ellum � it asks me gently to reach into the Deep Ellum of my memory’s consciousness for their bruised eye that open the lid to the opposite of indifference. In the world where everything gets downplayed, Hobson paints an unlush, un-windwept landscape of family bonding that stirs you awake. Hobson does not blow us away with fancy language or mesmerize us with his linguistic therapeutic unguents. We don’t expect large or vast answers to life’s large conflicts: drugs, depression, incest, dental care. His writing should be a deep sleep, a large fist that comes at you at 200 days per second, slowly, hitting your elastic temple and make you swell like a birthday candle. At the end of the book, the large fist opens like a flower. A flower that talks to you directly and tell you that the little things in life, the gestures of care, despite their unexpected consequences do matter and they open the vast channel of change. His male characters' names are also exquisite.
April 27, 2021
Mills Tavern was a shabby old saloon with a plank floor, dark wood paneling. An old jukebox played Johnny Cash: Early one mornin' while makin' the rounds, I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down. "Buddy of mine from Oklahoma played this song at his wedding," the guy sitting next to Gene said. The bartender and the other guy laughed.
Recommended if you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, who both offers a blurb for this novel and named it as one of her six favorite books in a 2017 interview (I might should go read all that list!). Hobson's Deep Ellum is an interesting compare/contrast to Moshfegh; while both get deep inside characters inhabiting the alienated edges of society, barely hanging on to the deformed shape of a life which is the best they've been able to fashion to this point, and are able to do so with not necessarily a lot of pages, I've always felt Moshfegh's work was steeped in misanthropy, while Hobson doesn't really seem to have that quality to his fiction, even here. His characters may be equally fucked up, yet his calm and undramatic prose offers them more grace.
Possibly it's partly age - as Hobson says he took a long time to work out his fiction; Deep Ellum was published when he was 44 and is his de facto debut, if you leave out a short experimental long out-of-print work published eight years before this one. Moshfegh in contrast isn't even 40 yet and has several major novels to her name. Will she move further towards grace and away from misanthropy in her novels of the next decade? I'll certainly be reading to find out.
Deep Ellum reads like an extended short story, leaving much unresolved and ambiguous. It's about family, and addiction, and mental illness. It paints a compelling picture and characterization without ever spelling a whole lot out. The characters are mostly depressed. It's almost as if the prose itself is depressed, rousing itself to tell you a little, but then sighing, "whatever, nevermind". Gideon, our narrator, pops hydrocodone pills, but the prose just tells you "I took a hydrocodone", without any fuss. The reader can construct what that means for herself.
Plot wise not a terrible lot happens. Gideon takes a walk through the Deep Ellum neighborhood. He chats with a girl. He scrounges a job. He sees an old friend who works at Taco Hut. He gets into a bath with his older sister (here too just hints of something dark, not overly spelled out). He takes pills. He visits his mother, gets in a fight with his stepfather. Little bursts of activity that form a picture of a whole.
On the final page the family all gets together and "It seemed this would be the moment of a great communication for all of us, but as we walked along the fence toward the barn, nobody said anything." Without saying much, this book says a lot, which is always a nice trick.
Recommended if you're a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, who both offers a blurb for this novel and named it as one of her six favorite books in a 2017 interview (I might should go read all that list!). Hobson's Deep Ellum is an interesting compare/contrast to Moshfegh; while both get deep inside characters inhabiting the alienated edges of society, barely hanging on to the deformed shape of a life which is the best they've been able to fashion to this point, and are able to do so with not necessarily a lot of pages, I've always felt Moshfegh's work was steeped in misanthropy, while Hobson doesn't really seem to have that quality to his fiction, even here. His characters may be equally fucked up, yet his calm and undramatic prose offers them more grace.
Possibly it's partly age - as Hobson says he took a long time to work out his fiction; Deep Ellum was published when he was 44 and is his de facto debut, if you leave out a short experimental long out-of-print work published eight years before this one. Moshfegh in contrast isn't even 40 yet and has several major novels to her name. Will she move further towards grace and away from misanthropy in her novels of the next decade? I'll certainly be reading to find out.
Deep Ellum reads like an extended short story, leaving much unresolved and ambiguous. It's about family, and addiction, and mental illness. It paints a compelling picture and characterization without ever spelling a whole lot out. The characters are mostly depressed. It's almost as if the prose itself is depressed, rousing itself to tell you a little, but then sighing, "whatever, nevermind". Gideon, our narrator, pops hydrocodone pills, but the prose just tells you "I took a hydrocodone", without any fuss. The reader can construct what that means for herself.
Plot wise not a terrible lot happens. Gideon takes a walk through the Deep Ellum neighborhood. He chats with a girl. He scrounges a job. He sees an old friend who works at Taco Hut. He gets into a bath with his older sister (here too just hints of something dark, not overly spelled out). He takes pills. He visits his mother, gets in a fight with his stepfather. Little bursts of activity that form a picture of a whole.
On the final page the family all gets together and "It seemed this would be the moment of a great communication for all of us, but as we walked along the fence toward the barn, nobody said anything." Without saying much, this book says a lot, which is always a nice trick.
January 3, 2018
Thoroughly enjoyed Brandon Hobson's Deep Ellum, whose narrator—who always seems to be going in and out of sleep—might be considered a knowing somnambulist, the various mirrors he looks into revealing the "odd parts," the "ambiguous concealment[s]," reflecting versions of himself: detached wanderer; melancholic solitary; brother of two oddball siblings; son of a depressed and bedridden mother. Like his sister, another mirror, he's a "born watcher," always "watching things happen to other people instead of doing things." One of my favorite "reflections" occurs on the book's first page: "To pursue solitude requires a sort of minimal desire, or maybe no desire at all. This is how I see it. To find loneliness, to become your own saint." There's an overwhelming sense of anomie, dread, and sadness in these pages, expressed with a commanding economic style.
July 4, 2014
Read 6/29/14 - 6/30/14
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to those who believe you can never go home again but say fuck it and do it anyway
Pages: 120
Publisher: Calamari Press
Released: March 2014
No one comes from a perfect family, no matter what those cheesy 80's tv sitcoms would have you believe. The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Family Matters - pah-lease. Whose family actually sits around the kitchen table bemoaning what's fair and what's not? Who has parents that are skilled in not only talking you out of doing something stupid, but could do so in a way that utterly convinced you, all nice and clean-like, without any yelling or cursing or throwing of things or verbal humiliation, like those god-awful shows managed, in a swift half-hour segment?
We are not the results of a happy, healthy, normal household. We are children of divorce or mentally and physically abusive parents. We are the unappreciated, unwanted offspring of dope-heads and meth-heads and alcoholics. We raised ourselves while our depressed, unemployed or underpaid, unhappy mothers and fathers struggled to make ends meet, children of parents who constantly reminded us of the hardship our needs and wants had placed upon them.
We got ourselves off to school every morning and relied on our older siblings to make sure we had some food in our stomachs and scrubbed under our armpits and behind our ears. We hung out with friends until late at night, hoping to sneak in unnoticed as our parents lie there on the couch, passed out in front of the television. We were one teeny tiny misstep away from becoming one of the wild, caged animals you see in the zoo, pacing back and forth across our small, familiar bit of land, puffing out our chests and snarling and snapping if strangers circled too close.
Brian Hobson's Deep Ellum is very much a sentimental look back at that broken childhood, at family relationships gone bad (and getting worse), at why they say "you can't go home again", and rightly, who the fuck wants to? It also details, more specifically, a reluctant last-gasp attempt to pull the pieces back together when three siblings are called back home after their mother's most recent failed suicide.
Gideon, our narrator and middle child, leaves his Chicago life behind and crashes at his older sister Meg's apartment to be closer to his mother and step-father in their time of need. Though he finds, within the very first day, that this is going to require a heck of a lot more energy than he is willing to expend. Meg, for her part, appears to do everything she can to avoid being around, preferring to lose herself in whatever dark and drug-induced corners of Dallas she can tuck herself into while Basille, the youngest and most conscientious of the threesome (though that's not saying a whole lot), is relied on for the day-to-day hang outs at the parents' place. Family obligation, freedom, and the fucking aggravation that goes along with all of it, right? Someone always gets to disappear while the other(s) are left, grudgingly, to pick up the slack.
Hobson is at his best when creating wholly uncomfortable familial situations - the Flowers-in-the-Attic wrongness to Meg and Gideon's relationship, the unspoken mounting tension between Gideon and his step-father, the increasing drug abuse of all three siblings, and the overall disinterest they show towards their mother and her current state of mind. What's the saying? The family that incessantly picks at each other's wounds stays together? Hobson is also a master at word economy, expressing only what's necessary and trusting, or simply allowing, his readers to infer the rest. He isn't afraid to hold a mirror up to all the ugly shit families are famous for pulling on each other, either. Whether you've lived a similarly messed up life or not, you certainly know someone who has, or can relate to some of the circumstances here.
Deep Ellum is one of those books you happily, unexpectedly, fall into. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile now, ever since the publisher sent along the digital file, quite a way's back. And for some reason it just kept getting pushed farther and farther down the review pile. Until, two days ago, when I was caught out and about without my current (paper) read, and pulled this up on my phone. Within minutes, Hobson's writing sucked me in and refused to spit me out until I'd read every last word. And as I read, every so often, I bent over and kicked myself in the ass, wondering what the hell took me so long to get started on it. But then again, I always feel the right books come to you at just the right times. I think Deep Ellum knew it was time. And I'm glad that I listened.
Dysfunctional families for the win!
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to those who believe you can never go home again but say fuck it and do it anyway
Pages: 120
Publisher: Calamari Press
Released: March 2014
No one comes from a perfect family, no matter what those cheesy 80's tv sitcoms would have you believe. The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Family Matters - pah-lease. Whose family actually sits around the kitchen table bemoaning what's fair and what's not? Who has parents that are skilled in not only talking you out of doing something stupid, but could do so in a way that utterly convinced you, all nice and clean-like, without any yelling or cursing or throwing of things or verbal humiliation, like those god-awful shows managed, in a swift half-hour segment?
We are not the results of a happy, healthy, normal household. We are children of divorce or mentally and physically abusive parents. We are the unappreciated, unwanted offspring of dope-heads and meth-heads and alcoholics. We raised ourselves while our depressed, unemployed or underpaid, unhappy mothers and fathers struggled to make ends meet, children of parents who constantly reminded us of the hardship our needs and wants had placed upon them.
We got ourselves off to school every morning and relied on our older siblings to make sure we had some food in our stomachs and scrubbed under our armpits and behind our ears. We hung out with friends until late at night, hoping to sneak in unnoticed as our parents lie there on the couch, passed out in front of the television. We were one teeny tiny misstep away from becoming one of the wild, caged animals you see in the zoo, pacing back and forth across our small, familiar bit of land, puffing out our chests and snarling and snapping if strangers circled too close.
Brian Hobson's Deep Ellum is very much a sentimental look back at that broken childhood, at family relationships gone bad (and getting worse), at why they say "you can't go home again", and rightly, who the fuck wants to? It also details, more specifically, a reluctant last-gasp attempt to pull the pieces back together when three siblings are called back home after their mother's most recent failed suicide.
Gideon, our narrator and middle child, leaves his Chicago life behind and crashes at his older sister Meg's apartment to be closer to his mother and step-father in their time of need. Though he finds, within the very first day, that this is going to require a heck of a lot more energy than he is willing to expend. Meg, for her part, appears to do everything she can to avoid being around, preferring to lose herself in whatever dark and drug-induced corners of Dallas she can tuck herself into while Basille, the youngest and most conscientious of the threesome (though that's not saying a whole lot), is relied on for the day-to-day hang outs at the parents' place. Family obligation, freedom, and the fucking aggravation that goes along with all of it, right? Someone always gets to disappear while the other(s) are left, grudgingly, to pick up the slack.
Hobson is at his best when creating wholly uncomfortable familial situations - the Flowers-in-the-Attic wrongness to Meg and Gideon's relationship, the unspoken mounting tension between Gideon and his step-father, the increasing drug abuse of all three siblings, and the overall disinterest they show towards their mother and her current state of mind. What's the saying? The family that incessantly picks at each other's wounds stays together? Hobson is also a master at word economy, expressing only what's necessary and trusting, or simply allowing, his readers to infer the rest. He isn't afraid to hold a mirror up to all the ugly shit families are famous for pulling on each other, either. Whether you've lived a similarly messed up life or not, you certainly know someone who has, or can relate to some of the circumstances here.
Deep Ellum is one of those books you happily, unexpectedly, fall into. I'd been meaning to read it for awhile now, ever since the publisher sent along the digital file, quite a way's back. And for some reason it just kept getting pushed farther and farther down the review pile. Until, two days ago, when I was caught out and about without my current (paper) read, and pulled this up on my phone. Within minutes, Hobson's writing sucked me in and refused to spit me out until I'd read every last word. And as I read, every so often, I bent over and kicked myself in the ass, wondering what the hell took me so long to get started on it. But then again, I always feel the right books come to you at just the right times. I think Deep Ellum knew it was time. And I'm glad that I listened.
Dysfunctional families for the win!
September 13, 2017
A great story. Kept me turning pages!
January 4, 2015
I was lucky to learn about this book from our county's superb book reviewer. Shortly after his review, I noticed that Dawn Raffel had chosen this book as one of her must-read short reads. Then I thumb back through an old NY Tyrant and notice Hobson has work published there.
I lived in Deep Ellum just as it was gentrifying in the 90s (and before its breathtaking plunge). It's hard to know how to rate a book like this because it gives you an unsentimental near-gestalt of the damaged lives of a family just hanging together, yet it didn't swing for the fences by moving much beyond the domestic. That said, I read this book very quickly with joy. I look forward to more work from this writer.
Most definitely worth two nights.
I lived in Deep Ellum just as it was gentrifying in the 90s (and before its breathtaking plunge). It's hard to know how to rate a book like this because it gives you an unsentimental near-gestalt of the damaged lives of a family just hanging together, yet it didn't swing for the fences by moving much beyond the domestic. That said, I read this book very quickly with joy. I look forward to more work from this writer.
Most definitely worth two nights.
July 14, 2014
You can't go home again? A fuller, more life-changing, review is forthcoming.
And here it is -
And here it is -
April 8, 2014
Hobson's prose is gorgeous and spare as the story is heartbreaking. Read this book. It'll be worth your time.
April 3, 2022
Raw and haunting, much like “Where the Dead Sit Talking.� Disturbing but somehow hopeful - classic Brandon Hobson.
March 12, 2018
3.5 stars
Pretty good story - I enjoyed it - I especially like that you could pretty much read it in half a day.
This book is only about the story for me - quite disturbing - subtle at times.
I found the last lines in several chapters to fall flat where there was opportunity for the author to leave the reader with something insightful and / or thought provoking.
Pretty good story - I enjoyed it - I especially like that you could pretty much read it in half a day.
This book is only about the story for me - quite disturbing - subtle at times.
I found the last lines in several chapters to fall flat where there was opportunity for the author to leave the reader with something insightful and / or thought provoking.
August 8, 2014
The best thing about it? It was short. Not sure what time period this Deep Ellum was set in. Current-day Deep Ellum is nothing like the Deep Ellum in the novel. The real Deep Ellum of 2014 is hip and brightly colored and full of tourists. Winter in Dallas is nowhere near as dismal as portrayed in the book. I'd expect someone who'd recently come home from Chicago to be walking around wintertime Dallas, TX in a light jacket. When place and time are such important elements in a story, it's hard to enjoy the story when the descriptions of place and time don't match reality. The protagonist isn't especially likable. He doesn't seem to do much except whine and get stoned. Then there's the brilliant prose. " 'I guess the reason you guys are so worried about me all the time is because I don't f* communicate with anyone,' she said." Seeing as how this character is a drug abuser who hangs out with shady guys, dates drug dealers, disappears for days at a stretch, and answers her texts once a week at best that's a bit of an understatement.
July 13, 2017
Quiet and sad, tragic and hopeful, depressing and a bit disturbing, it's about a quietly dysfunctional family on the brink...but the brink of good, or the brink of disaster?
You decide.
This could be any of our stories. There but for the grace of God and what not. Only 120 pages, but beautifully written.
When I first got this book in the mail, I was dismayed by its size. But once I started reading, I was caught -- completely captured by each word, and I realized a book didn't have to be large to be great.
This is a book about a fractured, complex family that at its core just wants the pieces to fit back together again. Three grown siblings, barely adults themselves and struggling with their own problems and trying to start their own lives, are drawn back to home in Deep Ellum to help their mother, who has overdosed yet again. Throughout this slim novel are characters that will stay embedded in your soul, and when you turn the last page, you'll find yourself staring out towards where home used to be and wonder, "What if..."
You decide.
This could be any of our stories. There but for the grace of God and what not. Only 120 pages, but beautifully written.
When I first got this book in the mail, I was dismayed by its size. But once I started reading, I was caught -- completely captured by each word, and I realized a book didn't have to be large to be great.
This is a book about a fractured, complex family that at its core just wants the pieces to fit back together again. Three grown siblings, barely adults themselves and struggling with their own problems and trying to start their own lives, are drawn back to home in Deep Ellum to help their mother, who has overdosed yet again. Throughout this slim novel are characters that will stay embedded in your soul, and when you turn the last page, you'll find yourself staring out towards where home used to be and wonder, "What if..."
April 5, 2014
The prose is raw and simple. Hobson is never distracted by the myriad of individuals Gideon, his protagonist, encounters. The movement from moment to moment is fluid and keeps the novel driving forward. Hobson creates such speed in his meditation on family and health within that unit that we have to stop and read again just to savor the small moments he continuously lays out. He's an author I'll be keeping my eye on.
May 14, 2014
Deep Ellum, with its sometimes subtle, sometimes fantastical explorations of human damage inflicted upon each other and to ourselves is all at once peacefully nauseating. Families, relations, an abundance of medication, frost growing on the window, failed preparations, Hobson flawlessly organizes an experience of muddled proportions wherein seemingly nothing is rational.
June 7, 2021
Author paints for us the life of three adult siblings aimlessly moving through their lives, but somehow still connected to each other and their parents. A masterpiece of mood; it might be labeled noir but for the fact that each in his own way cares about doing the right thing. Therein lies its porthole view of optimism.
September 22, 2020
wow—i really loved this book. i really connected to gideon and his life story. wish it didn’t end so soon.
November 6, 2018
Well that certainly was a disconcerting fever dream of a character study. Gritty & hopeless until the last few paragraphs & even then it didn’t reach very far into any bright hope. I thought it represented well the dark, dysfunctional side of an urban Dallas where drug use & mental illness wander aimlessly. Themes of human connection, flawed childhoods, and passive living will circle about in my thoughts for a while.
It presented itself like a preliminary sketch book of characters later recycled in Hobson’s 2018 release, Where The Dead Sit Talking.
It presented itself like a preliminary sketch book of characters later recycled in Hobson’s 2018 release, Where The Dead Sit Talking.
March 25, 2025
I saw Hobson’s novella referenced on a “best of� list of “Dallas books� and luckily managed to stumble across a copy. Despite the Deep Ellum setting, there’s nothing unique to Dallas. Cynically, Deep Ellum is no longer a neighborhood or a community, but instead now just a geographic place. The beauty of this story though is that it could feasibly take place anywhere and not lose any oomph. Hobson’s characters unquestionabley are deep but simple on the surface. This room for interpretation and exploration is what makes this such a great read. Highly recommended.
February 28, 2017
I can't remember where I read about this one, but glad I made the effort to interlibrary loan it. Gideon is the middle child in a dysfunctional family. He returns to his hometown to check in after his mother's suicide attempt. Gideon is staying at his sister, Meg's apartment, but Meg doesn't seem to be functioning all that well on her own, and family is concerned about her drug use. Gideon butts head with his step-dad, and his mother's depression sets a bleak tone for the entire family's ability to connect. A quick read (120 pages), with strong character depth, poignant floundering and packs serious punch into a small space.
May 29, 2014
Deep Ellum is the second work of Brandon Hobson's that I've had the pleasure of reading. Hobson's work fits well with Calamari's (mostly stellar) roster. It's more straightforward than many of the press's outre offerings, but it's all the better for its relative conventionality as Hobson is, first and foremost, a truly talented storyteller. Here, he presents a narrative that is at once hallucinatory/surreal and strikingly relatable to anyone familiar with the malaise and anxiety that accompanies being a 30-something who thinks too much. This novel reads quickly, like most Calamari pubs, and its uncomfortable and unusual imagery will linger long after you finish. Recommended.
May 28, 2014
"... the African jumping spider is more likely to bite someone with gonorrhea."
A deft portrait of a family and their substance(s). The closest thing a person can get to chivalry in Deep Ellum is a chemically induced peep at a horned mammal hiding behind a dumpster and a punch in the face from a failure named Axel. Hobson details the broken lives of Gideon, his family and the people in their vicinity with such swift acuity it took a few moments after reading to realize the characters were there (in my brain) to stay. He builds to a detente that shows how deeply he understands the lives he's writing and he finds for them some genuine peace.
A deft portrait of a family and their substance(s). The closest thing a person can get to chivalry in Deep Ellum is a chemically induced peep at a horned mammal hiding behind a dumpster and a punch in the face from a failure named Axel. Hobson details the broken lives of Gideon, his family and the people in their vicinity with such swift acuity it took a few moments after reading to realize the characters were there (in my brain) to stay. He builds to a detente that shows how deeply he understands the lives he's writing and he finds for them some genuine peace.
May 19, 2014
A sepulchral roller coaster. I was held captive from first page. Dark with lucid and luminous prose that shines through inertial freefall and orchestral echoes of ascent, borne by clanking chains of rusty tracks. Story is strewn with darkness—yet prose is scintillating, candescent, easy to read. An atavistically cathartic fusion of dopamine during momentum, and moments of snowy reflection.
February 24, 2014
Impressive, taut story of a damaged family living in and around Dallas. Hobson gets a lot into a small number of pages; also, there are narwhals, which is never a bad thing.
July 12, 2014
3 1/2 stars
April 5, 2014
Review forthcoming for D Magazine
June 30, 2014
A somnolent, druggie short novel about a dysfunctional family that surprised me with both its depth of characterization and its possibly hopeful conclusion.
August 14, 2014
Proof that you can always go home. Great read set in a neighborhood full of history--one that happens to be my new home.
March 31, 2017
Good writing, I guess, but didn't add up to anything for me. Feels like a good starting point rather than a finished work.
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