Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell
My rating: 3/5 cats
i have developed a real taste for literature from this region lately. and that might be the problem; why i didn’t love this book the way danaaaaa does. all of the other books i have read (and i am using the term “region” pretty loosely to encompass mostly appalachia, but blurring around the edges of appalachia-proper a little) have followed a pretty consistent speech pattern and tone that this one strays from. am i being sexist to point out that this is the only woman i have read writing this kind of material? and maybe the things i admire—the succinctness of the prose and the very barebones dialogue that masks some huge concepts are a regional idiosyncrasy that female writers value less? i would love some argument to this, because i know this can’t be true.
this is her nine-year-old:
But I didn’t see bitterness or self-pity or some warped nostalgic wistfulness in his face. What I saw was something like pride but pride without ego, something like acceptance but acceptance without ever being allowed to consider any other options.
this just doesn’t ring true as a nine-year-old observation. and—yes—the character is recalling the incident as a nineteen-year-old, but this and some other rather advanced psychological observations are being presented as having been acknowledged by a nine-year-old, and that just doesn’t mesh for me.
even as a nineteen-year-old, it wouldn’t work, not for this nineteen-year-old. and i am not saying that he needs to be an idiot, but the reality of his situation is that he works two jobs, goes to the shrink in his spare time, and is raising three younger siblings in the wake of his family’s tragedy. i just don’t buy a boy of his age, background, and situation waxing philosophical about art—from having seen some notecard reproductions—and having such sophisticated epiphanies, all the while experiencing hallucinations and blackouts as well as having his sexual awakening. meditating on the meaning of art is inessential —it is unrealistic to have this character speculating on the divergence of gender roles in a post-lapsarian world—this is an intellectual luxury.
were you ever a nineteen-year-old boy living hand-to-mouth mostly concerned with who would pay the bills and why your mom killed your dad?? is this how you spent time thinking??:
Her eyes turned a sandblasted gray as if she had made them ready for me to carve into them whatever horrible image i chose.
and
A gray mist had settled over everything, absorbing the weak morning light, and giving the air substance. I stuck my bare arm out into it and brought it back covered in shimmer. I breathed it in deeply, letting its feather weight fill my lungs and roll over my tongue. It tasted sweet and empty like purity should.
and i am not saying that poverty should go hand in hand with inarticulate or unsophisticated speech, but this seems indulgent and inappropriate.
you can have something be poetic and still ring true to the dialect of the region. ron rash, cormac mccarthy, castle freedman jr, daniel woodrell all function perfectly well within the confines of terse sentences that explode with meaning and they make sentences that resonate without sounding forced:
that is one of my favorite sentences ever.
and i could fill the page with mccarthy examples. and even nick cave in and the ass saw the angel—an australian, writing in a dialect that is occasionally sloppy, makes it realistic-sounding because of the biblical nature of the narrator’s speeches. they are wildly overblown, but the kid is a) crazy, b) full of a mission of avenging angeldom, c) fucking crazy—so the hifalutin’ language works, especially in a character that, being mute, can only express himself in his head, so the contrast works exceptionally well.
daniel woodrell makes such a believable character of ree in winter’s bone; in the way she is raising her two younger brothers by herself, in the advice she gives:
“Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
or
“Don’t fight if you can help it. But if one of you gets whipped by somebody both of you best come home bloody, understand?”
she is tough and matter-of-fact and she never shrinks from what is necessary. but it is all done, not with resignation, never like she is giving something up; she is simply practical and does what needs doing. and she never once talks about art.
but i have strayed from my point.
i can see why oprah likes it. she loves the dysfunctional, depressing families, with a soupçon of incest. and she thinks women will like it too. and she is probably right, only this woman has been spoiled with too many similar books that hit all my personal buttons.
the book is not at all bad—the descriptions of the landscape are wonderful—i love the coal seeping through the ground to blacken the salt licks, and the deer being drawn to them despite their slowly being killed by them. the author is from the region, and she does a really good job of building the scenery, but the people sometimes seem either like caricatures (slutty, looking-for-love-and-comfort amber) or just too flowery in speech. but i was never bored, and even though i could tell where it was going, it was still a good read.
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