Black River by S.M. Hulse
My rating: 4/5 cats
… this was something he was good at. Keeping his word. Following through. Doing what needed to be done.
this is a tremendous character study of a man who is not lovable, nor even likable much of the time, but is nonetheless irrefutably compelling.
i have this book on my “grit lit” shelf, but it’s a sort of variant of traditional grit lit. there’s definitely enough darkness, violence, dysfunction, and criminality to qualify it for the term, but her writing is more meditative than the muscular urgency that so frequently characterizes grit lit. it’s not a gender-thing – there’s nothing “feminine” about the writing and it’s much more gritty than pretty, but it’s also more ruminative than others i have on that shelf, and its themes are more mature and nuanced. it’s actually a little like The Ploughmen in tone and some of its themes.
wes carver is a hard and damaged 60 years old, a man recently widowed, deep in debt from medical bills, who finds himself returning to black river, montana after almost twenty years of living in spokane with claire, his beloved wife of thirty years. the reasons for his return are twofold: to bury claire’s ashes and to attend the parole hearing of bobby williams, the prisoner who brutalized wes for nearly forty hours during a prison riot where wes was working as a guard. the resulting injuries left his hands severely damaged, and unable to play the fiddle, which had been the center of his world and his purest joy.
wes is a sanctimonious, judgmental type – a strong silent man who endures life with a restrained stoicism and who, when he does break his silence, is unable to refrain from criticizing other people, particularly his stepson dennis, left behind in black river by wes and claire after he attacked wes when he was just sixteen. now in his thirties, dennis and wes circle each other warily, trying to set aside their unpleasant past in their shared grief and respect for claire’s dying wishes.
wes wants to attend the parole hearing, despite being told it is a bad idea. williams claims to have found god in prison and repents his actions on that day twenty years ago. this incenses wes – who, while attending church regularly, insisting upon grace before meals, and performing charitable deeds in the form of frequent platelet donations, has never felt god’s presence, despite a lifetime spent trying. the book is kind of a play on the job theme – not about a man who retains his faith while everything is being taken away from him, but a man who keeps trying to find faith despite everything being taken from him. and he resents that a thug like williams is claiming to have been graced with what has eluded him, after desperately going through the motions all these years. wes assumes williams is lying, and that a man capable of the kind of torture he inflicted should not be able to make a claim for divine absolution.
The litany: Dehydration. Concussion. A four-inch laceration above his right ear. A bruise building below his left eye, transitioning from swollen red to dark mottle. Blood crusting black on his lower lip, a broken tooth behind the split flesh. Two fractured ribs, a heel-shaped bruise shading the skin above. Abrasions around his wrists and ankles. Six cigarette burns. Five carved letters. Nine broken fingers. (Claire thinks of it another way: A broken pinkie. A broken ring finger. A broken middle finger. A broken index finger. A broken thumb. Another broken pinkie. Another broken ring finger. Another broken middle finger. Another broken index finger. And she could parse it further still, because she learns that most of those fingers have more than one shattered bone. Condylar fractures, the doctors tell her, split into the joints. Williams didn’t just snap. He twisted.)
wes has always been a firm believer in order and codified notions of right and wrong, but the possibility of williams being released into the world grates on him, and his belief in rules and order begins to falter when he finds himself unable to fulfill claire’s burial requests because that part of the cemetery has been closed.
Wes used to like rules. He liked knowing what to do, when to do it, how. He’d always felt that folks on the whole didn’t know what was best for themselves, and what he did for a living didn’t change his mind any. Believed rules helped. But then there were the rules the doctors had when Claire was sick. Visiting hours, when anyone could see a dying woman needed family with her. Rules the insurance company had about which treatments could be tried, and tried again. And now rules against burying a dead woman beside her sister.
wes is being tested at each turn and without the comfort of claire’s love, his moral path becomes darker and a bit more slippery.
and all this is great, moody character stuff, but where the book really shines is in the writing about music. wes’ father’s devotion to bach’s partita no. 2 in d minor as the only perfect work of art, who is a competent musician but one whose skills would never match his desires, claire’s appreciation of wes’ unparalleled gift for the fiddle, wes’ memories of how it felt to play onstage with a group, to lose himself in his music alone in his home, to teach dennis when he was a little boy, to listen to others now that he can no longer participate, how music was the closest he ever felt to believing in god, and the unexpected bittersweet opportunity to teach another gifted young man despite being unable to touch the instrument himself – all of this is such incredibly vivid, descriptive, moving writing that you genuinely feel how desolate wes is without the ability to play, to have been unable even to grant claire’s delirious deathbed request that he play for her. it’s powerful stuff – either very well-researched or coming from a strong firsthand knowledge, but it reads smoothly and seamlessly. and – gack – the details about the tapes – gutpunchy.
it’s a lovely, powerful piece of writing. there were many opportunities along the way for the author to have chosen the feel-good route, for some sort of easy-cheesy redemptive scene where everyone goes “awww wookit that character growth.” but she doesn’t. and that is so freaking admirable. because she doesn’t go the other route, either, the one that’s all “life is irredeemably fucked and bleak and hopeless.” the ending here is earned, and it exists for the character, not the reader. it’s a delicate bit of writing uncommon for a debut, and it is greatly appreciated. by me.
two quick things – the entire scene where claire pulls off the side of the road equidistant from her son in black river and her husband in spokane is such gorgeous economy of prose it is worth a mention, but too long to quote.
and did i detect a virginia woolf shout-out?? at one point, this line occurs: She goes out for the candles herself just after the evocation of a minor character named mac dalloway. oh, my…
definitely read this one. it’s a little jewel.
