an soon to be published sorta already author, So I'm experiencing the very surreal world of Goodreads on a different level now, wincing a bit every time I sign in and see the number of ratings slowly accumulate.
I've been mostly lucky and blessed by the generosity of wonderful readers, with a few doozies thrown in there for good measure and more to come, I'm sure.
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It makes me contemplate my own past carelessness in reviewing, and even in reading, How I haven't always brought my "best reader" to a book, and how that does me and the author and anyone who happens upon my review a bit of a disservice.
I can't go back, sadly, but I'm more conscious now about bringing my best to each book I read, This one, for example, took Carson McCullers five years to write, Five years of her precious life to write this gorgeous thing, allpages of it, It deserved my best, and I hope that I brought it,
So much care and love and pain went into the crafting of this short novel, That's plain to see. It's incredibly, sensitively, painstakingly rich, It's lyrically expressed. It's heart achingly authentic.
It brought back for me The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, what with theyearold female protagonist, a tough little being in an equally tough and alienating world.
Both books could be called "coming of age" novels, but I hesitate to label them as such, There's so much more happening here involving identity racial, sexual, social that exceeds the often sweet connotations we associate with "coming of age".
The story is set in an unnamed town in the Southern U, S. , but I wouldn't call McCullers' style Southern Gothic, If her style has a name, I'd say it is Southern Realism, Frankie is having a tough summer, a summer in which she doesn't belong to anything, Unless, of course, you count the kitchen, where she and Berenice and John Henry sit, eat, and fractiously play cards to pass the time.
Now, with her brother's upcoming wedding, she's finally got something to look forward to, Frankie holds on to the promise of this wedding with all she's got, The anticipation of finally being part of something, and finding her "we" in the soon to be newlyweds, is everything to her,
She's essentially fallen in love with her brother's wedding, and all it could mean for her life,
We readers ache at this we want to warn Frankie, We want to tell her it's dangerous to fall in love, to put all one's eggs in one place with no plan B.
But we understand, at the same time, We've been there, or our own version of it, We've all wanted to be someone else, or somewhere else, or at the very least, gotten a little lost in dreams, We may even still be mired in those dreams, and Frankie reminds us of it, and we ache again,
Frankie, or F, Jasmine, or Frances, is at a turning point in her life and her identity, McCullers shows us how she tries names on, like a new hat, and how each name offers different context and possibility, Identity is the pivotal theme here, Frankie muses in a way that feels shockingly relevant about how she'd like to switch between female and male identity, and Berenice wishes that people were all of the same colour.
In one incredible scene in the kitchen, a deep melancholy hits all of them as they realize, due to their identities, their individual lack of agency and utter loneliness in the world.
The world is "sudden", according to Frankie, and yes, it is, Sexuality lurks ominously in the shadows, Death is around the corner, One day could make all the difference, or not,
Five years made the difference here, because as I read this bookyears after it was published, I felt the rush of connection and understanding that Frankie was searching for.
Thank you, Ms. McCullers. De man zit met zijn buik dicht bij zijn stuur, Zijn ronde gezicht is vol van zijn gelijk, Hij staat in Kalmthout bij een kruispunt van niks, en hij heeft zonet een jonge vrouw aangereden,
Aangereden is precies het goede woord: de vrouw ligt bijna op de grond, haar fiets zit bijna onder de auto, en ik begrijp pas veel later dat de man haar vanuit zijn auto ook nog eens verbaal zit aan te rijden.
Zonder uit te stappen.
Ik heb niet zien gebeuren hoe de auto de fiets heeft geraakt, Ik was de vluchtheuvel aan het naderen, Toen ik eenmaal op de vluchtheuvel stond en links van me keek, zag ik dat er blijkbaar iets aan de hand was, Veel te lang heb ik zitten registreren: auto voor en achter me, dit is een vluchtheuvel, dit is bebouwde kom, daar staat een auto links, daar wilde een auto rechtsaf gaan, en kijk: een jonge vrouw heeft haar fiets nog wel vast, maar ze ligt bijna op de grond.
En ze huilt.
Het is de dag voor Kerst, De man die dichtbij zijn autostuur zit, en daardoor bovenop de wereld lijkt te zitten, zegt door zijn open raam tegen de vrouw dat ze niet aan die kant van de weg had mogen fietsen.
Volgens mij zegt hij dat, Hij vindt dat hij niet verantwoordelijk is, Hij heeft vier wielen, zij heeft er maar twee, dus ziet hij zichzelf als de baas,
Ik had moeten uitstappen, Die gedachte zeurt al dagenlang, De bestuurder van de auto voor me is wel uitgestapt, Hij heeft zijn auto geparkeerd om de jonge vrouw even te helpen, De man met de buik en het ronde gezicht is nog maar net en zonder pardon doorgereden, Om de kreeften voor zijn Kerst op te halen, Omdat de Hubo op zijn todolijst stond,
Ik had mijn auto naast de auto van de bestuurder voor me moeten parkeren, Sterker nog: ik had midden op de vluchtheuvel moeten uitstappen om de man die vol was van zijn gelijk een paar directe vragen te stellen.
Uitgerekend de afgelopen dagen heb ik Op jouw bruiloft uitgelezen, de vertaling van Molly van Gelder van The Member of the Wedding.
Voor mij was dat een hernieuwde kennismaking, na meer dan dertig jaar, En het was precies het goede moment, “Zo zaten ze met zn drieën op de Schepper en het werk van God te mopperen,” schrijft McCullers over haar personages Frankie, Berenice en JohnHenry.
Lees dit boek, hoe langzaam het ook is, en laat het traag doorwerken, Laat het verhaal je plagen, tergen zelfs, Zoals ik hoop dat de man die de jonge vrouw aanreed af en toe wakker schrikt en niet meteen begrijpt wat er in zijn ronde kop aan de hand is, maar dan ineens tot een besef komt.
Het is geweldig als iets stiekem binnensijpelt, zoals dit boek van Carson McCullers stiekem onder je huid gaat zitten, I'd imagine the word 'universal' gets thrown around a lot in regards to this work, The temptation of it is exactly why I am excising it from my vocabulary, for even the small amount of literature I've read in the culverts of unacknowledged canon were enough to show the lie of the word.
I find an immense amount of resonance in this work, resonance structured on a foundation of tokenism, sentimentality, and other measures of selfwilled isolation commonly shared with other white people works of 'universal' meaning.
I do not claim that works such as sitelinkCities of Salt or sitelinkAlmanac of the Dead do not rely on the same dynamics of self vs other, but no one would think to call them universal.
That epithet requires power, and the world at large is not of a mind to grant them that,
How much does the cult of US American childhood play a part in letting millions of white parents sleep at night Boys will be boys, girls will be sugar and sweet, and every excuse will be made when a troubled teenage soul slaughters their propagators with gun in hand.
I wonder how many condemned Frankie's father for letting her roam rather than the systematic excision of her mind from her body by the mores of society.
There are the usual excuses: lack of mother, lack of white female friends of a common age, the lack of urban space commonly put as the ultimate solution by the North and the South.
As per usual, McCullers comes much closer to the heart of it than most who try their hand at the metaphysics of growing up, but the threat society places on the body of a young white girl is still centered around that fact of whiteness.
I may be too old to take as deep a comfort in this as I would have once, but my methods of reacting to fear of the oncoming void with rampant imagination are no different now than they were at age twelve and under.
Enough experience has honed it into a serviceable way of living in this capitalistic age, replete with the communication skills and awareness of personal strengths requisite in this country of mine.
However, I now know that I am never going to "grow up" for better or for worse, I absolutely loved this book right up until Part III, which is very short, a kind of addendum added onto the main story.
And I thought no: that is overkill overkill being the apposite word, It's as if the talented Ms McCullers couldn't rest with the story just as it was she had to make it into a ripyourheartout climatic ending.
Maybe some people like that
So, the delightful, superb, so beautiful middle section is quite simply the three main characters: Frankie, or F.
Jasmine as she calls herself in part II, Berenice and little John Henry West, Frankie's cousin just sitting around eating dinner hoppin'john peas and rice, Frankie's favourite sweet potatoes roasted and split open, ham on the bone, which Berenice pulls at daintily with her fingers and corn bread to mop up the pot liquor!
It's not the food that gets me although that is enjoyable it is the relationships between the three and how they talk to each other how they love each other and how the two children take all their worldly thoughts to Berenice and how Berenice relates the stories of her three bad marriages and her one good one.
There are various minor characters in the background, Frankie's father, the soldier, friends of Berenice Honey and T, T. , the people F. Jasmine meets in her walks through town but they just form a kind of hazy surround to those three central characters a fourth maybe is the town itself hot and sultry in the Deep South.
Here is an example of McCullers catching with pitch perfect ease the conversation between the twelve year old and the housemaid, Berenice who cooks the children's meals and does everything else too.
'Now tell me your honest opinion,' F, Jasmine said.
But Berenice looked at the orange satin evening dress and shook her head and did not comment, At first she shook her head with short little turns, but the longer she stared, the longer these shakes became, until at the last shake F.
Jasmine heard her neck crack,
'What's the matter' F, Jasmine asked.
'I thought you was going to get a pink dress, '
'But when I got in the store I changed my mind, What is wrong with this dress Don't you like it Berenice'
'No,' said Berenice, 'It don't do. '
'What do you mean It don't do, '
'Exactly that. It just don't do. '
F. Jasmine turned to look in the mirror, and she still thought the dress was beautiful, But Berenice had a sour and stubborn look on her face, an expression like that of an old longeared mule, and F, Jasmine could not understand.
'But I don't see what you mean,' she complained, 'What is wrong'
Berenice folded her arms over her chest and said: 'Well, if you don't see it I can't explain it to you.
Look there at your head, to begin with, '
F. Jasmine looked at her head in the mirror,
'You had all your hair shaved off like a convict, and now you tie a silver ribbon around this head without any hair.
It just look peculiar. '
'Oh, but I'm washing my hair tonight and going to try and curl it,' F, Jasmine said.
'And look at them elbows,' Berenice continued, 'Here you got on this grown woman's evening dress, Orange satin. And that brown crust on your elbows, The two things just don't mix, '
And so the 'discussion' swings back and forth between the two with comments thrown in from John Henry I would like to print it all, but it's a bit long for a review so I'll just add on the
last couple of paragraphs.
'I think you're just not accustomed to seeing anybody dressed up,' F, Jasmine said.
'I'm not accustomed to human Christmas trees in August, '
So Berenice took off the sash and patted and pulled the dress in various places, F. Jasmine stood stiff like a hat rack and let her work with the dress, John Henry had got up from his chair and was watching, with the napkin still tied around his neck,
The real wrench in the story is that relationship between the little boy and Frankie the descriptions of the six year old trying his best on all occasions to please Frankie and then defying her in frustration with her impossible demands is where the heartbreak truly lies.
I suspect that in Carson McCullers' life there was a small boy and her completely normal childhood behaviour of viewing the boy as an appendage to her own needs was something that probably haunted her.
My point however, is that we the reader are haunted by John Henry from the second he appears and each time after when Frankie either dismisses him or demands him to come at her whim.
The second heart of the story of course is the black woman's tender and loving care of the two children who are not her own.
She treats each of them with a gentle seriousness which occasionally borders on the stern, But her patience and her thoughtful consideration of how each child thinks and feels is apparent in the dialogue,
This book is really a five star read I just can't quite forgive McCullers for the tragic last section, .