Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon
My rating: 2/5 cats
so i figured this, which i read for the christian/gentle segment of R/A class, would be the beigest of the beige: dentist office carpeting, hotel room art, supermarket music (although my supermarket plays a lot of corey hart and toad the wet sprocket, so—awesome) but what i didn’t count on from “gentle reading” was quite so much attempted rape, whipping, and use of the word “nigger” by white people. sure, it takes place in mississippi, whose racial tolerance has come a long way, baby (oh, but i still do think he is dreamy…) but i thought the point of gentle fiction was to excise all the uncomfortable realities and serve up some pap for the grannies. guess not. the reality of this world is one where a man gets an unsigned notecard in the mail from his hometown (40 years after leaving it) that says “come home” and nothing more. and he goes, receiving cryptic phone messages and other notes throughout and DOES NOT GET DISMEMBERED at the end. this is a gentle world, indeed, full of obedience and no consequences for foolishness:
“Who is ______??” (i have kindly avoided spoilers.)
“I have no idea, except he’s the one who wrote me in Mitford. I talked to him on the phone this morning, he wants me to meet this afternoon at one o’clock”
“Where? And what for?”
“We’ll meet at Frank’s place, he says someone wants to see me, insists the whole thing is covered by prayer. We’ll drive out to the country about fifteen miles.”
She pondered this. “How do you feel about going off with a total stranger who lacks the courtesy to sign what he writes, much less tell you what he’s up to?”
“He sounds like an agreeable fellow. There’s nothing to worry about. I promise”
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famous last words, in the real world. teenaged girls—take heed: THIS IS A BAD IDEA.
but be that as it may, i was going to give this three stars cats because i didn’t hate the dickens out of it. but it’s not great, and i will never read another of her books, and i can’t see giving this the same number of stars as i gave borges, even to prove some anti-elitist point, for which i do not have the strength.
my favorite quote, which does kind of serve as a commentary of the genre:
“You want your lip balm in cherry, lemon, or chocolate?”
“Can’t it just be plain??” Nothing was plain anymore.
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well, not nothingzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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