It's the story of a southern US family leading up to and going through the Vietnam War era, but it keeps hearkening back a hundred years prior. It is heartbreaking. The narrative style rings true--so true that my book club hated this book, with one reader exclaiming, "There wasn't a single character likeable enough to keep reading."
Not true, in my heart, not true. This book was my summer reading assignment the summer before my junior year at a new school, me with a broken collarbone, living in a one bedroom corporate apartment with my parents and three siblings until I got shipped off with my brother to live with relatives while my family managed to find a house in Houston, which was to be my last stop in the moves with my family.
This book is what made me want to write more than lists and hypergraphic scrawls. This book made me want to be a writer, want to hear and record and live in dialogue and description.
You had me at, "a vine that watches over a family cemetery through generations".
ReplyDeleteWow. I've never heard of this one, and your description of where you were when first reading it reads like a song—because music works that way. Fabulous.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. It sounds fascinating. I love books that make me want to write.
ReplyDeleteI think it is so cool that you have read Clyde Edgerton. I read Raney, Walking Across Egypt, Killer Diller and The Floatplane Notebooks shortly after he published each. You are the only other person I know who's read him. I tried to get my book group to read one of his books, but that fell flat. Their loss.
ReplyDeleteDid you see this? (Go Clyde!) https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/josh-shaffer/article81369717.html
Also he's a musician.
That makes me like him even more
DeleteNever heard of him... I've obviously been living under the Canadian Shield. You've convinced me that I have to read this book.
ReplyDeleteYou have a talent for writing about books.
ReplyDelete