Access Today All The Living Assembled By C.E. Morgan Presented As Publication

quiet little story was told so intimately I could almost hear her breathing Aloma, the young woman who tells us about her days spent with herself in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people.


For most of the book I didn't know if I liked Aloma or not, but I knew absolutely that I could relate to her, and I wasn't always happy about that.
. There were also moments throughout when simple sentences would sink into an awareness that I had never realized and yet suddenly recognized, and shared,

Every evening was like this, the night taking the day with no clear demarcation of its passing so she could not mark the precise moment when night arrived again.
It took her continually by surprise and she had grown to hate that,

This would have been astar read right up until the last thirty or forty pages, when what should have happened did happen, and even tho' it took me by surprise I found myself falling in love with Aloma, and Orren, and especially the author C.
E. Morgan for telling this simple, profoundly honest story, I might have given thisif I based it solely on the story which is slow moving and where nothing seems to really happen, Then I thought about how much the writing conveyed and decidedwouldn't be fair,

There's no need for me to give a synopsis of the book you can read that yourself, I can only tell you that I could see the drought on this tobacco farm probably somewhere in Kentucky, I could feel Aloma's emptiness , her desire for a happier life , her need to fill the void in her life that has been wanting of family and love, I could feel Orren's grief and his burden of responsibility to save the family farm,

I can say that the ending was not what I would have hoped for early on or even in the middle of the book, but was satisfied that this was how
it should be.
stars. This book really affected me, It was all I could think about during the couple days I spent reading it, and it is still stuck in my head a week later, It made me think about whether love is just a matter of circumstance, and whether, in the search for freedom/happiness, it is ok to settle for mediocrity or what one is "comfortable" with.
Morgan has a very distinct way of writing, which plays into the vivid imagery of the book, She uses words in a pleasantly strange way not strangely pleasant that describes things at a whole new level, Overall, this book is amazing, I have been reading a lot lately and this is by far the best book I have come across in a very long time, There are plenty of useful reviews about the plot, but my meaningful contribution is just to say, you have to read All the Living! It was always dissonance that she liked best.




How difficult it is for humans to understand and communicate with one another even lovers, How difficult to discern and form lasting, mutually supportive relationships and marriages, How difficult it is to embrace life in the face of death and all the forces that push us towards despair, And how to discern the path between love and ambition, between thinking that going elsewhere is the answer and embracing life here and now, honoring the commitments already made to each other.
And maybe it's not in the eitheror but in the dissonance, the vibration between these conflicting notes, that life is real life,

This is a fine debut novel, an intense deepdive into a few transformative months in the life of a young woman driven by dissonant desires, In spare, beautifully crafted sentences, sensual evocations of place, lyrical eroticism and spoton Appalachian dialect, it grapples with these issues of commitment, responsibility, and morality of faith and doubt of lives circumscribed by poverty, culture and religious milieu and of the traps this kind of life or perhaps, life in general seems to set for young people or for women or perhaps, for people in general.
And of the hope that remains,

madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead, But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for better a living dog than a dead lion, Ecclesiastes:epigraph

Aloma Earle a character who conveys a visceral sense of aliveness discovers her own talent and passion for classical piano at an Appalachian settlement school in rural Kentucky, and wants to take herself out of the dark mountain hollow to a life she imagines will be both literally and metaphorically brighter.
It is unexpected and almost shocking when the sight of the hills affects her not with their beauty but with an almost PTSDlevel dread at the thought of being stuck there forever.
Morgan is good at this kind of unexpectedness her prose is always fresh,



At the same time, in a way that is almost animal and beautiful, even breathtaking Aloma initiates what turns into a passionate relationship with a seemingly free young man, a student from the state agricultural college.
Orren Fenton is attracted in turn to Aloma's independent, combative personality: I can see you're nobody's fool, he says,

Their carefree, student relationship takes the plunge into real life and Orren into adulthood when his mother and brother are killed in an accident, leaving Orren alone in charge of his familys small, droughtstricken tobacco farm.
Although Orren is indeed free in the sense of being single, Aloma soon learns that he is unfree in other ways she never imagined, When, at his request, Aloma joins him to take on a wifelike role, confusion ensues on both sides with regard to their mutual intentions and level of commitment, Both grapple with the transformation wrought on Orren by his grief and desperation, while Aloma seemingly grapples alone with her desire to play piano seriously,

At Orren's suggestion, Aloma finds work playing piano for the church his mother attended not really very satisfying for a classical pianist, but she manages also to practice her own music.
As she plays, the pastor, Bell Johnson becomes attracted to her, thinking she is available Aloma has concealed the fact that she is living with Orren, which is unacceptable in that time and place.
And Aloma's ambivalence to marriage grows with the reality of what living with Orren will mean, Although both Aloma and Orren are now orphans, their experience of orphanhood is almost diametrically opposed, Aloma cannot remember her parents, and has no ties, Orren is bound and tied to his ancestral home in a way Aloma can't fathom, From the walls of his living room, dozens of pairs of eyes stare at her, all the way back to handtinted portraits of Confederate soldiers, What has she gotten herself into There are no glib answers, I found this an interesting twist of the threads of modernity and tradition Aloma is modern in her mobility but traditional in her traditionally womanly sense of the importance of religious faith to a mature life handled seriously by Morgan yet with a delicate touch while Orren is modern in his separation from religion but traditional in his commitment to marriage, family and land, and history.


From my perspective, there was no shortage of red flags on either of these two men, At times I found myself thinking "Run away, Aloma, run away!" Weirdly, both Orren and Bell have old pianos in their homes that have been so badly neglected that they are beyond restoring to playability.
Oh good grief I'm pretty sure that heavy handed omen was a deliberate dose of black comedy,



I loved the way Morgan conveyed the complexities and dissonances of Alomas character, her almost breathtakingly combative conversational and even physical relationship with Orren Fenton, and her more ambiguous chaste friendship with Bell.
Aloma is both “relatable” and not entirely likable her gratuitous bitchiness and deceptions can come back to bite her, Yet there was also something very real and good about Orren and Aloma's developing relationship, and I'm someone who believes that just because a relationship is difficult doesn't mean it isn't right, and I felt that Morgan left that possibility open.


The novels ending was both surprising and ambiguous, with elements of tragedy and hope leaving a lot to chew on, I would like to know what happens in Alomas life, which, given her personality promises not to be boring, Now I want to read everything else C, E. Morgan writes.



./
Updated/revised my review after having some time to chew on my thoughts about the book a while longer,

Image credits: Abandoned piano: Photographer Roman Robroek, Daily Mail, com. Actually in Italy not Kentucky! Old church in Lynch, Kentucky, Photographer Bryan Woolston, Daily Mail, com.
For a paper with such a bad reputation, Daily Mail seems to have good photo spreads assuming they are correctly attributed, As an American I actually had no idea of the reputation of Daily Mail when I found these pictures by Google searches, . .
. Man harvesting tobacco during a drought near Midway, Kentucky, Photographer Charles Bertram, Lexington HeraldLeader,
. Traditional tobacco barn with drying tobacco leaves, Bloomfield, Kentucky, Photographer Linda Bruckheimer, NettieJarvis. com. I am blown away by this story, All I can say is C, E. Morgan has written the richest and most beautiful story I have read in a long time, She has captured something extraordinary on paperthe people, the land, the smells, the heat, the fear, the joy, the sadness, Her writing is impeccable, readable, soulsearching, In the end, I felt like I was there, like I knew these peoplewhat an excellent read! I'm afraid to try the next book on my listit may pale in comparison.
First of all, a gripe,
I confess my aversion to books who condescendingly offer ridiculous titles like this one, . . All the Living: A Novel
Do we really need these qualifiers Henceforth:
Barack Obama: A President
TunaNoodle Casserole: A Food
So there, I do feel a bit better,
On to my review, which is leaner than my complaint,
All the Living A Novel is a wellwritten book that tells a simple story, It fits neatly into the Gap Creek/Plainsong genre which deals in the strife and sorrows of our country brethren who live beneath the MasonDixon Line, C. E. Morgan writes authoritatively I would assume she grew up on a farm, She devised a number of memorable scenes and characters, My only admonishment is for her overusage of random and rare adjectives, . . they are very distracting, especially for wordistas who give pause to the unfamiliar, I don't expect to consult my dictionary while reading dialogue from characters who speak like Jethro Bodine, Like the title, it's unneccessary, "She wondered what kind of luck was required to be someone other than the person you were born to be, "

I admit I came into this book with expectations, given that Morgan's second novel, The Sport of Kings, looms large in my recent reading history and is one of the best things I've ever read.
My copy of it lives nearly permanently on my desk, so that I can page through it and read pieces of it when I need something good, Morgan's scope and prose in this debut are pared back a little in comparison, and the prose didn't work quite so well for me for example, as I read this book over the course of a few hours and with great attentiveness!, I was able to easily notice the overuse of particular words.


But this is still a beautiful book, about grief and love and easy things and hard things, about the motion of life and death, and about the wildness of the earth we live on, about the deep wildness maybe it's a soul, idk that lives inside of us.
God, grace, and living with mystery amp unknowability, Unsurprisingly, the sermons were some of the most interesting thematic aspects to this book, It's about a summer season of drought, It's about Aloma, a longorphaned young pianist who moves in with her grieving, recentlyorphaned boyfriend

on the suffering farm he's inherited, It's about the distance between them, It's an intimate novel centered around Aloma understanding her feelings, My own emotions about and understanding of Aloma flashed back and forth violently while reading, and I wouldn't recommend it to readers who don't want to read a novel about a young woman coming of age and wrestling with losing her immaturity and ignorance, but I really liked this.
I read a lot of the reviews for this book and was prepared to be disappointed because of the hype but found myself intrigued, It's another one of those modern books without a lot of plot but Morgan more than makes up for it with her wonderful, subtle writing and her insight adjacent aha's.
The ending surprised me as well, The main characters are a pair of kids who are forced to grow up fast and they chose to agree to hold up one another, They almost fail at this last but they almost succeed, The boy has been plunged into grief with the loss of his brother and mother, The girl has never had any family, Neither can see the extent of the other's pain much less help mitigate it, One of the best things Morgan does is blur the line between internal and external thinking and activities, She doesn't use quotation marks so you're never quite sure if something is said out loud or if it's a thought, This might sound like it would be irritating but it actually adds to the depth of the insights which she helps you feel you've come to on your own, Cleverly done. I hope she keeps writing,

PS I wish Goodreads used astar format, I'm torn between aand afor All the Living but since there are no more gradations I'll give it arather than theI'd give it on apoint scale.

A New York Times Book Editors' Choice



One of the National Book Foundation'sBest Writers Under

Finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished book of fiction

Third Place in Fiction for the Barnes amp Noble Discover Award

Aloma is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, educated at a mission school in the Kentucky mountains.
At the start of the novel, she moves to an isolated tobacco farm to be with her lover, a young man named Orren, whose family has died in a car accident, leaving him in charge.
The place is rough and quiet Orren is overworked and withdrawn, Left mostly to her own, Aloma struggles to settle herself in this lonely setting and to find beauty and stimulation where she can, As she decides whether to stay with Orren, she will choose either to fight her way to independence or accept the rigors of commitment,

Both a drama of ageold conflicts and a portrait of modern life, C, E. Morgan's debut novel is simply astonishing, . . a book about life force, the precious will to live, and all the things that can suck it right out of a person Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times.
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