Latest reviews

The latest reviews of The Backside of Nowhere are starting to show up on amazon.com and so far they are FAB-U-LUS! Three customer reviews have been posted so far, and all three are five-star reviews. Two are by friends, and one is by one of amazon's top 500 reviewers, whom I do not know.

Amos Lassen

Lots of fun

I just finished reading Alec Clayton's "The Backside of Nowhere" and I am still chuckling. It is one of those books that keeps you laughing to yourself. Set near my home town of New Orleans on the Gulf Coast, I found so much that I identified with. We all know about the catastrophes of the area--the hurricanes and storms--which are caused by nature, but in this book we have other kinds of floods and hurricanes which are not the result of nature. We are all aware that truth is many times stranger than fiction. Clayton shows us that truth is often funnier if not as funny as fiction. People of that area of America are unique--in fact, they are strange. This is a look at a South you have never seen before and it is as full of gossip as it is funny. Clayton gives us wonderful characters and he weaves social issues into the plot. Stay tuned as I am working on a lengthier review which will be coming soon.

Jack Butler

Think Carl Hiaasen crossed with, oh Walker Percy. This novel is funny, acutely observed, full of larger-than-life characters (if you're from the South, you'll probably think you know some of them), and alive with rollicking action. Take a lively bunch of ne'er-do-wells (but don't call them that to their faces), plus a few do-wells, including the local boy who's made it big and mocks his roots, stir in casual racism, wild misunderstanding, floods, storms, and other disasters human and natural, and this pocket of sea-coast Mississippi explodes into hilarious and vivid life.

Linda Delayen

Highly recommended read!


Alec Clayton seems to have hit his stride in his most recent novel, "The Backside of Nowhere." The book begins to unfold slowly, mirroring the damp, moss-dripping setting of Freedom, Mississippi. Through flashbacks, we come to know these well-fleshed-out characters and their relationships to one another. The tempo begins to speed up as the story unfolds and brings us, at last, to a stunningly written climax that makes you feel as though you are seeing the action on a big screen and not just reading about it. From movie stars to the Ku Klux Klan and from lovers to haters, Clayton's characters leave quite an impression.

The book is now available at Orca Books, Olympia, WA, Square Books, Oxford, MS, amazon.com and claytonworks.com