Sarah Court by Craig Davidson
My rating: 5/5 cats
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh
it has been such a long time since i have finished a book and wanted to immediately start all over from the beginning again.
this is a book that does that thing i love so much but would have trouble articulating were i to approach a readers’ advisory practitioner for a stylistic readalike. so i have to advise myself, usually, but i will try to describe “that thing” so everyone can see what it is like in karen’s head:
this book is like ribbon candy. not that it is sweet nor that it should be given to children by their grandmothers. but its scope is like that: temporally, character-wise, action-wise—it folds back on itself, but there is this connective stripe running through it that binds the action, and demonstrates that actions have consequences, even if they cannot be predicted. you know, like ribbon candy. this is such a shitty analogy.
this book is like The Seducer, which i think i described as “spring-shaped” *goes to check* no, but i described its sequel The Conqueror that way. same thing. i think “ribbon candy” is a better image, and goodreads reviews are all about images, right?
this book centers around one neighborhood block, and five families that live there; their connections, both acknowledged and clandestine, their shared childhoods and grown-apart adult lives, their failures and secret guilts and long-nursed resentments. their revenges.
it is the dirty underbelly of a dark town. it is about emotionally damaged characters causing, usually, physical damage, only occasionally intentionally. it is 95% endurance, and 5% hope. with a touch of the supernatural. but just a dusting, no sookie here.
since we are inside my head, allow me to give you a peek into my experiential arc with this book…
“derr derrr derrrrr what do i want to read now?? i don’t feel like reading YA…i don’t want to review another downtrodden appalachia book right now…nothing too labor-intensive because i am swamped at work…no short stories…ugh—i have no books here…oh!! sarah court!! cool, i have had this forever, and i do love the czp!! canada!…read read read read…wait—these are short stories?? but i said NO short stories!! oh, wait. ohhhhhh, that character was in the other “story.” oh, and they are referencing something that took place before…ohhhhh wait—this is “that thing” i like! where the book fills in gaps left by its other parts later on and doesn’t necessarily call attention to it, but there is mirroring and secret connections and picking up threads i thought were finished and it becomes this huge clove-studded orange of a book with everything plugged up and interlocking and beautiful and is really a novel that is disguising itself as short stories oooohhhh love love love—where’s my sparkling ice—love love love”
basically.
i am endorsing this book. again—not to those of you who cannot abide cruelties to people and animals, because there is a bunch of that in this. but to those of us who can handle a little dogfighting and eye-transplant surgery.
i am going to go back and reread great swathes of it now.
the rest of you, enjoy your evenings…and forgive my scatterbrainery—it has been a long day week.
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