Claire Fullerton's Blog: A Writing Life - Posts Tagged "book-review"

There's a good reason the Atlanta Journal Constitution called Ron Rash "one of the major writers of our time." To me, he is this and more. Ron Rash writes in a gritty, mountain vernacular that can't be faked; one has to come from it and know it as their own voice of consciousness in order to wield it as plausibly as he. Rash's language, therefore, is its own reasoning; it speaks of a clear-cut, hard-edged, uncompromising way of living in the world devoid of the illusion of optimism. One wonders, as they read Rash, if it is the jaded wrappings of cynicism or the unvarnished truth behind his tightly crafted novels. This is a writer who delivers the dark notes of beaten humanity in such a way that there is hope. In The World Made Straight, Travis Shelton comes from nothing, on the cusp of manhood in an unforgiving North Carolina mountain community, where drug-dealing is a viable livelihood, in this hardscrabble region with few opportunities outside of one's own wits. It is the glimmer of something more that drives him to prove himself to his rough-hewed, hard-nosed father. Travis seeks to better himself after one fight too many; he leaves the tobacco fields on his family's land and presents himself at the trailer of a local named Leonard, who is both drug-dealer and mentor, in that he is the only one in Travis' sphere who, at one time, amounted to anything, though fate made it short-lived. Under Leonard's influence, Travis pursues his high school GED, while shouldering the fall-out of the one false move he made, when he riled the shackles of local heavy-weight, Carlton Toomey, when he trespassed on his land. These are mountain characters who play by their own lawless rules, in a landscape where it's every man for himself. In a climate still stinging from the horrors of the Civil War, the characters are born beneath the shadow of the ties that atavistically bind them, albeit through a sense of random tribal placement that haunts this story in an unfolding mystery, the impact of which the characters are not completely aware, until the looming puzzle work fits. It is a small world, in The World Made Straight, but it is universal in implication. Self-worth, justice, revenge, and hope against all odds flavors this story, which ends in notes of satisfaction and just deserves.

This is, yet again, another gripping Ron Rash novel. What stays with me most, upon reflection, is that the premise of The Risen is tight and simple. Two brothers, in a small North Carolina town, are swimming in a creek in the summer of 1969 and meet a seventeen year old outsider who impacts their lives. But Ron Rash gives us a thorough psychological treatise, through the character of younger brother Eugene, on the desperation behind falling in love for the first time and the complexities of younger brother syndrome during one's coming of age. Place is a character in this story, described in Rash's keen vernacular, and it is the unsolved past that pulls us through this story. The reader lives in two time frames as the story unfolds, which gives us the experience of cause and effect. On the one hand, The Risen floats on the wings of the fruits of summer, on the other its tension builds through the guilt of a broken man. The Risen is a page-turning mystery with a twist, written in such a way that you can feel the guilt that haunts the two main characters' involvement. It speaks of the repercussions of one false move that shadows lifetimes, and though the mystery may have been solved at the end, it suggests that nobody gets away with anything for long.

In my mind, there’s Pat Conroy and then there’s everybody else. What makes him an island unto himself is his intimate, confessional writing. I’ve been wrestling with trying to articulate exactly why his words speak to so many and have arrived at the conclusion that at the foundation of his God given gift to effortlessly arrange words is the bedrock of clear thinking. Too many people buckle under the weight of their own unwieldy emotional level, and as it is only human nature to duck and cover from pain and confusion, their unexamined emotional life takes on a crippling weight all its own and leads to a list of crimes against the human heart. The magic of Conroy is in his fearlessness to call anything by name and his cache of language to do so exactly. In so doing for himself, he does so for humanity. His is a dauntless, confident voice so surefooted, his readers know and trust him. Each of his novels sends the reader through the thicket of life itself then leaves them parked in front of a mirror to reflect. In A Lowcountry Heart, Conroy tells his legions of fans not only how he does this, but why. I’ve heard Conroy called a generous writer by many, and this book tells me how he earned the reputation. Behold, the man behind the curtain, who has a seat across from you and looks you in the eye as he explains what goes on in his passionate soul. Pick a subject, any subject, and Conroy pontificates in this treasure of a book. Thank you, Nan Talese and Doubleday. This, like all of Pat Conroy’s books, is a masterpiece from the man who keeps on giving.

I've always been an admirer of the first person narrative. When handled deftly, it magnifies the complex variables that comprise us all. Rebecca is a psychological treatise with a confessional tone spawned from the narrator's perception, and this is the story. That the narrator is young, inexperienced, and overwhelmed to the point of skittishness sets the dark tone of every paragraph in this cleverly paced mystery. Her vantage point is solidly built on assumption, suspicion and crippling self doubt. The plot is a simple one: the young narrator begins as a paid, personal companion to a domineering wealthy woman, who is on holiday in Monte Carlo, when fate places her in the dining room of a luxuriant hotel next to the table of the troubled widower, Max de Winter, who hails from the Cornish Coast. An awkward and unlikely alliance develops between the narrator and the worldly Max de Winter, which leads to a hasty marriage, in which the reader learns along with the narrator of de Winters' disturbing past. Set in the house and rambling coastal grounds of de Winters' stately Manderley, the narrator enters a dynamic firmly in play, whose tone was cast and exists still from the hand of Rebecca: the first Mrs. de Winter. Rebecca's shadow looms imperiously, and brings to the fore the narrator's insecurities. Having no background story on her predecessor, the inchoate narrator is tossed by the winds of assumption, half-truths and incomplete perceptions made all the more dark by the presence of Rebecca's loyal personal maid, Mrs. Danvers, whose presence lends a disquieting air, due to her supercilious knack for comparison. Rebecca is an off-kilter mystery that unfolds along the road of the search for truth regarding what, exactly, happened to Rebecca. That the narrator stays in suspense until the sinister end lures the reader through a story elegantly told in language so poetic, it is its own experience.

Once you attune yourself to the voice of this emotionally evocative story, it’ll submerge you in language like water running in a creek bed. Author Bren McClain takes the reader to a down on its luck farm, in the esoteric pocket of rural 1950’s Anderson, South Carolina and delivers lines, such as “Get the by God out of my clean yard” and “He’d probably be drunk as a coot and trying to have relations with his common law.” It is McClain’s uncompromising use of language that gives us the consciousness of each character in this purpose driven story, who are all linked to each other by the common pursuit of raising a steer to enter into the 1952 Fat Cattle Show and Sale, with dreams of winning the monetary prize awarded to its Grand Champion. Every character has its own agenda, and the best and worst of human nature is depicted as we follow the motivation of each principal character to the destination of one fateful day. One Good Mama Bone opens with a birth’s gripping drama and never turns the reader loose throughout its breath-catching, suspenseful build. It gives us a protagonist in single mother Sarah Creamer, who doggedly fights the constraints of poverty and wrestles with her own beaten down identity, all in the name of selfless love for her young son, Emerson Bridge. Sarah’s quest tugs at the heartstrings with the lure of her incremental maternal awakening, as reflected in her relationship with a mother cow named Mama Red. That this story contains a nemesis in the contentious, self-serving cattleman Luther Dobbins, who throws up one heart-stopping obstacle after another on the road to Sarah and Emerson Bridges’ goal keeps the pages turning to the very end. I loved this book for the mood that descended every time I returned to its pages. It’s a rare book that hands you a life you can slip into, and an even rarer writer that’ll give you a million reasons to do it.

I’ve been following author Billy O’Callaghan’s career with rapt enthusiasm, since I fortuitously came across him last year on LinkedIn. That he is Irish caught my attention, and as I delved further, I discovered he is the author of three short story collections, all of which I’ve read, all of which, to me, are in their own league and genre of what can only be classified as literary excellence. And so it was that I awaited the release of The Dead House, O’Callaghan’s first novel, and subsequently tore through it in three sittings. It’s the type of book you can’t put down, yet when you do, it stays with you.
In a first person voice unlike any other I’ve ever come across, O’Callaghan gifts us with a story that unfolds in just the way you’d want to hear it by the fireside: it is confessional, it is insightful, it is no-nonsense and direct, yet wields evocative words slipped in so seamlessly that the reader is pulled into the fantastic story in cresting waves that move the story forward while explaining the inner workings of the narrator’s vantage point. The reader understands the narrator, art dealer Michael Simmons, right out of the gate. He lays his cards on the table with no apology as he tells about his client, young, vulnerable, and frail painter, Maggie Turner, with whom he cultivates a mentor-like relationship verging on that of siblings, as he guides her career. That Michael is devoted to Maggie’s overall well-being helps us understand his acceptance of her capricious tendencies, and so it is that when Maggie decides to move from London to an isolated, desolate seaside location on Ireland’s rugged west coast, Michael has reservations, yet chalks them up to her artistic temperament needing artistic space.
The Dead House’s story is centered on one fateful night, during a weekend house party at Maggie’s renovated, pre-famine Irish cottage that involves a small group of friends, a bottle of whiskey, and a Ouija board. Everything careens in spine-tingling plausibility from there, in a dynamic that begins in seemingly harmless fun, yet quickly turns off-kilter with unintended consequences that sneak up over the readers shoulder with such disturbance that this book is best not read at night. And yet I’d be hard-pressed to label The Dead House a ghost story; though it is that, it is more. It is a treatise on friendship, a look at the ambiguity of new love, a tip-of-the-hat to Ireland’s storied past, and a lyrical love song to the unfathomable beauty of Ireland’s haunted, windswept terrain.
Let me now confess something I’ve never done before, after reading the last line of this book: I went back to the first page and began again. The reason I did this is because I was nowhere near ready or willing to let the narrator’s voice go; I was too invested, I was too concerned, and the fact that the story is so suspenseful that I read it with white-knuckled urgency made me fully aware, even as I read, that I simply had to go back and revisit its artful language. I’ll site an example of O’Callaghan’s genius with language here: “Another Sunday. Christ, the fools that time can make of us.” But I’m gushing. Because O’Callaghan deserves it.
All praise The Dead House. Do yourself a favor and get ahold of this book. It will be available in America come spring of 2018, but, if you’re American, you can do as I did and order online through O’Brien Press.

I loved everything about this luring story, which unfolds from a present tense haunted by the resonance of a deep-rooted family saga. A Good Girl, by Johnnie Bernhard, opens on the highway from Mississippi to Texas, as fifty-year-old Gracey Reiter returns to her childhood hometown to stand vigil at her dying father’s bedside. Memories flood unbidden, while Gracey, a middle child, takes responsibility for her father, Henry Mueller’s, exit from this earth. On the surface, Henry Mueller was a hard man who unwittingly left many scars. Beneath the surface, a road twists through all the reasons why.
It is Gracey’s aim to do the right thing, even if it is from a sense of perfunctory obligation. Fighting a nagging resentment, she goes through the motions of tending to her father, while her older brother nurses his childhood wounds, and her younger sister seems to have gotten off scot-free. Birth order matters—it spawns separate experiences, yet Gracey achieves an aerial view as she reflects upon a generational line tethered with the common thread of hard knocks, desperate circumstances, and the will to survive for one’s children.
Only a profoundly sensitive, deep thinking writer could compose a novel with such breathtaking, well-crafted acumen. More than a pleasing story, A Good Girl makes a humanistic point that isn’t cheapened with a convenient moral. It’s a big subject, this business of the sins of the father. Author Johnnie Bernhard handles it deftly, and touches on the redemptive powers of unselfishness, when one puts aside their self-oriented feelings to seek a compassionate, wider understanding of cause and effect in a family dynamic reaching three generations back to Galway, Ireland.
I was invested in each character throughout this story. Those in the past were equally as vibrant as those present tense, and the way in which Bernhard wove this epic saga to come home to an uncanny full circle was heart-warming and emotionally satisfying, when Gracey’s daughter, Theresa, marries a man from Ireland.
A Good Girl is a story of personal growth on the inner plane; a story of faith and hope and the ties that bind. It is universal in theme, in that it is the kind of story that compels one to pause and reflect upon their own familial history. All praise to author, Johnnie Bernhard. I loved this novel and look forward to her next release.

The title Whiskey and Ribbons is derived from a toast delivered by Eamon, one of three narrators in this psychological treatment of love spun unexpectedly and repercussively awry. “Women, you are sleek and gorgeous. You hold us together, you’re the ribbons,” Eamon says, yet we hear this speech as his brother, Dalton’s, memory, for the reader learns at the start that the toast maker is dead. Eamon and Dalton have grown up together as brothers, yet the ties that bind are unusual and not honestly revealed for what they are until well into the story. Author Leesa Cross-Smith holds the reader captive in language so creative and au currant that we identify with both well-drawn characters and readily understand why Eamon’s wife, Evangeline, weighs issues of loyalty between the two charismatic young men, though one is alive and the other is dead. That Evangeline is a new mother, having given birth to Eamon’s son after his death as an officer in the line of duty is the dilemma, for who is she to turn to in her prostrate grief but a brother-in-law who equally grieves? Three vantage points are entwined to tell this one story of familial connections, in a seamlessly crafted, roiling momentum that will have you thinking they each have a justifiable point. All praise this spell-binding debut author. Leesa Cross-Smith has penned an uncommon novel in a voice you won’t easily forget.

Bold, daring, and yes, confessional, River Jordan’s collection of personal essays warns you going into it that you’re in for something unique. After all, what is the art of writing, if not a venue to compare notes on this business of life? Only a master can make this plain through the power of fifty delightful stories. This is a writer who asks the big questions for us; who owns a steady faith base yet thinks outside the box. Confessions of a Christian Mystic is devout and dauntless. It is sonorous, beautiful, soul-deep, and fearless. And it is sardonically funny in its skirt-lifted vulnerability. The chapter titled, “Sometimes Good Girls Get Naked” is a case in point. With a deft hold on sentiment without being overly sentimental, I won’t cheapen this important book by suggesting it’s a page-turner—it is better. Confessions of a Christian Mystic is something to savor. You’ll want to pause and ponder at the end of each chapter.
I applaud every essay in this gorgeous gift of a book. River Jordan has woven vignettes of her personal narrative at such an engaging, introspective pitch that I defy every reader not to see themselves in its pages

Review of Little Tea by BookTrib's Judy Moreno: Every so often you read a novel so intricately and exquisitely crafted that it reaffirms an admiration for the whole art of writing. Little Tea by Claire Fullerton (Firefly Southern Fiction) accomplishes this considerable feat with a sensitivity as graceful as Southern charm. But not everything about the tradition-steeped culture of the past is as pleasant as it looks on the surface. The reader, through the intelligent and reserved perspective of protagonist Celia Wakefield, steadily discovers these alarming discrepancies while attempting to both discern the present and understand what came before. As flashbacks clarify Celia’s context, the supporting characters take on fully-fledged lives of their own, practically dancing out of hers and into their own rich narratives. The conclusion binds their stories together with some utterly satisfying twists and revelations.
Celia Wakefield is a mature married woman with a stable job living in California, now far removed from her Southern roots. She is, however, still quite close to two childhood friends, so when down-to-earth Renny expresses concerns about ethereal Ava, the three meet up at Renny’s lake house in Arkansas in an attempt to set a few things straight. It’s easier said than done; Celia has to confront a nuanced personal history which she’d much rather keep internalized. A palatial ancestral plantation in Mississippi provides the setting for most of the flashbacks, with familial relationships taking center stage in a drama that plays out as her narrative unfolds. Her father, mother, two brothers, and grandparents all have crucial roles, as well as her old love Tate and her two aforementioned friends, but the bond she shares with “Little Tea” outshines all the others. Little Tea, the daughter of Celia’s family’s black housekeeper, is the heart and soul of the novel, the lynchpin around which the drama revolves.
Little Tea has many strong points thanks to the adept Claire Fullerton. She clearly thrives when employing her métier. Themes and motifs including illuminating the complexities of Southern culture, delving into gritty yet convincing family dynamics, examining racial tensions, wrestling with mental illnesses and addictions, and, above all, proving the tenacity of enduring love between friends, all are handled with tremendous skill yet a delicate touch that keeps the prose elegant and highly readable. Fullerton has great fun when setting the stage for a scene, painting a vivid image with lush language such as, “In the air, a vibrato of cicadas pulsed so discordantly as to be concordant, like one wall of sound that tricked the ear until I could feel its heartbeat.” As the reader jumps back and forth between the past and the present, it never feels jarring or incongruent when the author can create a sense of place this deftly. Every character is complete and complex, hiding profound secrets under their Southern guise of composure, and it is a joy to understand them better with every memory that Celia invokes.
Though gorgeously penned and sometimes as dainty as a fine cup of the title beverage, Little Tea also manages to raise profound questions and demand critical reflection upon some challenging truths. Celia’s bond with Little Tea faces many obstacles and pressures, with the ugliness of prejudice twisting an apparently compassionate cultural climate into something destructive and disturbing. Some characters have moved forward from old sins while others have not, wrenching families apart. While racism underscores the narrative, its presence doesn’t, unfortunately, mean that the characters avoid life’s other misfortunes. Marital dissatisfaction, identity crises, battles with depression and addiction, and death itself still haunt the pages of the novel. In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, there is a persistent sense of hope and joy illuminating the pages; it inspires Celia, Ava, and Renny to come out of this trip with a better understanding of their lives through the lens of their friendships. Love runs deeper than hate, and that reassuring truth is the real crux of Little Tea.