Get It Now Heading Out To Wonderful Written And Illustrated By Robert Goolrick Available Through Digital Edition
certain I noticed this book first due to the author, Robert Goolrick, I had read Reliable Wife and wanted to see what Goolrick would do this time out, Also, I immediately fell in love with the title, Heading Out to Wonderful, The imagery of this drew me right in, Add the quote from the fly leaf "Let me tell you something son, When you're young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brandnew penny, but before you get to wonderful you're going to have to pass through all right.
And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you're ever going to go.
" and I knew I had to read it as soon as it hit our shelves,
There were parts of Heading Out to Wonderful that reminded me of Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, and yet different.
It's that old time America, in the hills of Virginia setting, that promises peace and simplicity, The story takes place in post World War II,to be exact, The town, Brownsburg, Virginia, a place Goolrick describes as "the kind of town that existed right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadn't touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldn't have", etc.
Charlie Beale wanders into town, out of nowhere, in his truck,suitcases on the seat, one wellworn with his clothes and steel butcher knives and the other, made out of tin, filled with money.
You're not quite certain where he came from but he tells the reader, he's back from war and his daddy's dead.
All you know is he wants some land and a place to work and not much else.
He soon finds a tract of land outside the town, by the river, and a job with the only shop that sells meat and becomes part of the lives of the owner, Will, his wife Alma and their young son, Sam.
Sam calls Charlie Beebo and it sticks, All this sounds so innocent and yet, somehow I knew before the story was done that it was not going to end well.
You can see the beauty of it and yet you know it can't last,
I won't tell you much more than that, Heading Out to Wonderful is a story filled to the brim with obsession, power, and passion.
It is sensuously erotic in the way that only Goolrick can write it, Throughout Goolrick serenades us with mountain songs and this book begs a play list, I can hear Eva Cassidy singing The Water is Wide, maybe not the version the author intended but one of my favorites.
I found myself searching out Bluegrass man, Mac Wiseman, I don't think his song More Pretty Girls than One was quoted and I bet, Charlie Beale wouldn't have heeded it anyway.
There were a couple of things I couldn't figure out and at first these annoyed me but then, I thought, the few questions remaining for me might have been left so on purpose.
They are talking points and like Reliable Wife, Heading Out to Wonderful should make a great book discussion.
Im struggling to figure out just what I want to say about Heading Out To Wonderful.
The writing is lovely, and I became involved enough in the plot that I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the book.
On the other hand, Im not sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Heading Out To Wonderful is set in the sleepy rural town of Brownsburg, Virginia in, postwar years when life in America was on the cusp of change.
The author lovingly describes the quality of life in Brownsburg:
Brownsburg, Virginia,, the kind of town that existed in the years right after the war, where the terrible American wanting hadnt touched yet, where most people lived a simple life without yearning for things they couldnt have
And also:
A particular town, then, Brownsburg, in a particular time and place.
The notion of being happy didnt occur to most people, it just wasnt something they thought about, and life treated them pretty well the notion of being unhappy didnt occur much either.
Into this small town arrives Charlie Beale, an attractive and pleasant man who appears in his truck one day, bringing nothing but two suitcases, one filled with butcher knives and one filled with cash.
Charlie seeks out work with the local butcher, buys a plot of land out by the river, and settles in.
Charlie remains something of an enigma throughout the book, He isyears old, athletic and graceful, skilled with his hands and his knives, He served in Europe in the war, but doing what exactly, we never find out, The only clue we get about his wartime experiences is that his butcher knives are German we can only speculate as to where or how he acquired them.
Charlie doesnt speak about his childhood or background except in vague generalities, Where did all that cash come from We dont know, Charlie is full of yearning, for a place, for land, for connections, and for goodness, Somehow along the way, Charlie lost his sense of hope, and so he set out traveling, looking for “something wonderful”.
His new friend and employer Will tries to reset Charlies expectations:
Let me tell you something, son.
When youre young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brandnew penny, but before you get to wonderful youre going to have to pass through all right.
And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as youre ever going to go.
Brownsburg aint heaven, by any means, But its perfectly fine. Its all right.
Charlie seems to have found “all right” in Brownsburg, He earns the friendship of the townspeople, and is the adored companion of Wills young son Sam.
Charlie might even have been content at last, until he meets Sylvan Glass, ayearold “hillbilly” girl, bought and paid for by the richest man in town, now a trophy wife who dreams of glamour and Hollywood.
What follows is a yearlong affair which consumes Charlie and disrupts the lives of everyone in town.
Reading about Charlie and Sylvan, we know that something disastrous has been set in motion I could only wait to see what shape the disaster would ultimately take.
A sense of foreboding hangs over the story from the outset, Its clear that nothing good can come out of the affair, By the time I reached the halfway mark in the book, it became very difficult to put down, and I had to keep reading to see which way it would go.
To avoid spoilers, I wont say anything about the
books climax, other than to say that events unfold that are at the same time tragic yet not unexpected.
At the conclusion, I was disturbed by the lack of overall coherence, Many plot elements that are compelling are introduced, but I didnt see the followthrough, The black and white communities live completely separate lives in Brownsburg, Both Charlie and Sylvan develop relationships that reach out across the color lines, yet I didnt feel that this part of the story particularly went anywhere.
Concepts of sin and salvation are introduced as Charlie struggles to fit into the spiritual life of the community, but again, I didnt feel the points were carried through as the plot unfolded.
Ultimately, dramatic as the story is, Heading Out To Wonderful left me a bit puzzled at the end, wondering about the point of it all.
Robert Goolrick is a terrific and thoughtful writer I loved his previous novel, A Reliable Wife, with its dark secrets and twistyturny plot developments.
Unfortunately, despite the lovely prose, Heading Out To Wonderful doesnt quite deliver, Charlie Beale is a stud, a war veteran and a skilled baseball player, He works hard at his craft as a butcher and proves himself a conscientious friend, All the women in the small town of Brownsburg have a crush on Charlie and all the men respect him.
But Charlie is looking for something more he's Heading Out to Wonderful, And he finds wonderful in the form of Sylvan Glass,
Sylvan is beautiful, whipsmart and glamorous, She dreams of celebrity and has achieved a moviestar's appearance and mannerisms despite being born in the country.
All the men in Brownsburg have the hots for Sylvan and all the women are jealous of her.
It's only natural that when Charlie and Sylvan meet they fall instantly in love and it's only a matter of time before they achieve their destiny and screw.
Will the two hottest people in town find happiness together or will their affair be dashed by Sylvan's villainous husband Boaty Boaty is hated by all and owns a laundry list of personal defects he's gluttonous, greedy, boorish, cowardly and mean.
But despite his faults he's amassed considerable wealth through some vaguelyworded business dealings his story is almost inspirational.
Boaty bought Sylvan like a head of cattle and even though he despises her he'll never let her go.
And he holds the deed to her family's farm giving him leverage should she try to leave.
I'm sure a more banal setup for a love story could be imagined, but it would take some effort.
This tale of illicit romance takes a number of increasingly unlikely, dramatic turns with diminishing effect until the sensationalistic, shrugworthy conclusion.
But while the plot is trite and unconvincing, Goolrick redeems himself with winsome prose and lovinglycrafted supporting characters.
This could be the breeziest halfbaked novel you read all year,
Edited Sam Haislett is five, six years old in the story, telling it later in his sixties.
Sam says of the story he's about to tell, "Was I damaged by it, they want to know, wounded in some way And I always say no.
I don't think I was hurt by it, But I was changed, changed deeply and forever in ways I realize more and more every day.
Anyway, it's too late now to go back, to take that rock out of the river, the one that changed the course of the water's flow.
" Sam's story begins with Charlie Beale coming to town, Nobody knows where he comes from, but he makes friends right away with Sam's parents, Will and Alma.
He works for Will in his butcher shop, Goolrick paints a vivid picture of Charlie Beale in a wonderful Southern storytelling voice, Beale is more comfortable sleeping on the ground out by the river, he's industrious in the butcher shop, he keeps a diary, smokes Lucky Strikes, and he grows so fond of Sam that he becomes like a second father to him.
Of course, Beale falls in love, and the story is about the passion of his life, and even though Sam says at the beginning that he was not wounded, I think the story is about how Charlie and his love wounded each other and Sam.
That's one of the truest beauties of a good fiction, you don't necessarily have to believe everything it says.
Goolrick's descriptions of each character is skilled and eloquent, sometimes coming from the conversation of other characters in the book.
Will says of his old childhood friend, Boaty Glass, "Nobody likes him, . not even me. Not any more. He's no more like the boy I knew than Eleanor Roosevelt, And it ain't just because he's rich, He was a nice boy, big, but not like he is now, Now he's just plain gross, Got a hillbilly wife he wears like a ring on his little finger, "
The place of Brownsburg, Virginia lives and breathes as much as any character in the novel.
Protagonist, Charlie Beale falls in love with the country "the landscape he walks is an endless cascade of loss and dying and coming to life again, and he feels the immense silence of the dead and the eternal pulse of the living in the soles of his feet.
He is in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Viginia, on flatland by the Maury River.
He is cradled in the palm of the valley as a mother holds an egg, " Charlie Beale is proficient at butchering and baseball and falls in love with the land and a woman.
This is the story of his passion told at times in the meandering voice of a Southern storyteller, but each layer is a wash of watercolor, with sometimes the stain of oil and blood.
All the meandering is like the rivulets and brooks that run to sea, They start off small and turn into something powerful, .