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I write this from the little town of Fort Smith, Arkansas � the place where Arkansans go if they can't take the heaving, helter-skelter metropolis of Little Rock. It seemed at first to be a rather unliterary place: when I asked around for a local bookshop, passers-by could direct me only to the Revelation Christian Bookstore, which seems to have staked its business model on bland modern Bible translations and pro-life bumper stickers. So it was quite a pleasant surprise finally to hit upon True Grit and to hear the voice of Mattie Ross laying out her story:

I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

This is a novel that lives or dies on the strength of Mattie's narration � and it's pitch-perfect. She is gruff and determined and unsentimental, relating the most dramatic scenes with an endearingly deadpan matter-of-factness; she's also completely humourless (‘We have always liked jokes in our family and I think they are alright in their place�), which often makes her narrative hilarious in ways that she does not really intend.

It seems like a simple narrative simply told, but from about the third paragraph I was already feeling hugely impressed by how Portis was putting it together, with a sly wit coming through in all kinds of clever little constructions and inverted expectations. As for instance when Mattie asks the Fort Smith sheriff who the best local marshal might be:

The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, “I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L. T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.�

I said, “Where can I find this Rooster?�

Joining Mattie and Rooster on their quest into Indian territory is the dandyish Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf, whose name � pronounced "la beef" � struck a chord with me, because I had already embarrassed myself by mentioning the nearby park of Petit Jean to my Uber driver and pronouncing it the French way. (He calls it "pet it gene".)

What follows is a travelogue that works both as a traditional Western and as a gentle puncturing of Western traditions. The language is shot through with beautiful regionalisms like blue-john and middlebuster, and out-West figures of speech about waddies and the hoot-owl trail and so forth, most of which Mattie dutifully encloses in inverted commas. Her dryness means the characters are allowed to emerge quite slowly from the text, with none of the literary grandstanding that is so annoying in so much modern literary fiction. At moments of high emotion, Mattie can say simply

LaBoeuf was pleased with himself and he reloaded his rifle

…where modern authors, obsessed with the idea that they're not allowed to ‘tell� anything, would write a paragraph of bullshit about how a flush of pleasure stole into the Texan's weatherbeaten cheeks and an unaccustomed smile played around his lips. Here the details are much richer for being supplied by the reader him- or herself.

This is one of those books that I will be recommending to everyone, because it's something that even people who don't read much are likely to fall in love with. I can't help looking forward to when my daughter's old enough to give her a copy. And Mattie's tendency to lace her story with Sunday-School scriptural verses means I'll be suggesting that it's added to the shelves of Fort Smith's premier religious bookstore, post-haste.