Logic

by Olympia Vernon

After critics raved over Olympia Vernon's first novel, Eden, Vernon returns to the Deep South for the story of Logic, a young girl struggling to free herself from the unspeakable condition she refers to as "the butterflies floating inside" her.
As a child Logic Harris survived a fall from a tree-an accident that precipitated her transformation into a young girl lost in her own world. Logic's mother has secretly wished that Logic had not survived, and she now ignores the increasingly apparent evidence of the aberrant attention Logic's father bestows upon his daughter in her adolescence. As her mother retreats into her work as a neighborhood midwife and Logic's father collapses into paranoia, Logic is left to navigate alone what she scarcely understands. In inspired prose, stunning in its imaginative authority, Logic is a chilling allegory about the dangers of silence and a searing portrait of a girl lost in shame and fear, and a family and community too scarred by their own wounds to save her.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Psychology

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Olympia Vernon grew up in a small town on the border of Mississippi and Louisiana, the fourth of seven children. She has a degree in criminal justice and received her MFA from Louisiana State University in the spring of 2002. Olympia has twice been granted the Matt Clark Memorial Scholarship and was nominated for the Robert O. Butler Award in Fiction in 2000. She is the author of A Killing in this Town, Logic and Eden, for which she won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award in 2004. In 2005 she won the Governor’s Arts Award in the Professional Artist category in Louisiana. In 2008 A Killing in This Town won the first annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence award.

Reviews

[REGEEKULOUS · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel as if this book is an abuse poetry, dialect and prose to the extent that no meaning, impression or (interestingly enough) logic can be derived from the pages. The only time I can tell what's going on is when someone is having sex or getting raped which happens often enough to have carried me through 171 pages. I am so angry at this book that I'm going to finish it.

...Having completed the book, I must revise. The only time i could tell what was going on was when someone was having sex, getting raped, having an abortion or dying.

[Jamie Mundell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Im usually quite a fan of obscure poetry and imagery, but this story uses so much that it can be extremely hard to follow. It took two readthroughs to even understand the plot.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It insists upon itself. There is far too much effort placed on making things that shouldn't matter seem important, and things that should matter (like names) seem irrelevant and meaningful at the same time. The story is terribly hopeless, you want it to stop because you realize that early on, but it insists on itself. I wonder why she had to tell this particular story? It's really the sad song of the south, we've all read, watched it, witnessed it... why try to make it art?

[Jacie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has a really strange writing style, and took a while to catch onto it, but as I read more of it, it seemed this is how the girl is describing events to deal with her situation, and that made it all the more interesting. The author did a good job at explaining the scenery, and, having never set foot in the Mississippi area, I felt transported to a place like I'd never been to.
I didn't like how it ended. Other than that, it was good.

TW: child abuse and sexual abuse

[Corbin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel oscillated between hit-you-over-the-head symbolism and a-little-too-gappy suggestiveness; as a result, I oscillated between feeling manipulated and confused. To be fair, the content and setting of this novel is a context which is completely unfamiliar to me, and so I probably lacked some of the requisite hermeneutic resources to truly understand what Vernon was doing. So take my single-star rating as indicating my personal lack of appreciation and not as a judgment about the literary quality and import of the book.

There were moving scenes. One definitely does feel for the characters, and Vernon withdraws some of the initial rigidity as the story unfolds and you learn more about each character's concerns. But the graphic nature of the tragic events in the story seemed to carry a lot of the weight of story-telling, much like the violence in a Tarantino film, and I don't enjoy that in-your-face aesthetic.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really stunning language... Hard to follow at times, of course, but I think there's a real artistry in Vernon's presentation. At times a cemented plot isn't necessary, and in this case it didn't matter if I didn't have a "logical" view of what was going. Really beautiful, and disturbing at the same time. Very good - one of my favorites from my African American Lit II class.

[Tawanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dare I say it? Tres Toniesque which is a compliment in my book. Yes, I made up a word. If others can do it, so can I. If you can't comprehend the deep spirituality of the story itself, then don't bother reading it. Some people just don't get it and that is okay. The manner that it is written buffers the blow of the subject matter.

[Pratik · Rating 1 out of 5]

whoosh..for me..apparently

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars: Satisfying book but slightly difficult to keep up with. Certain terms are never explained and there are so many details it takes away from the true plot.

[kelly]

DNF, page 155.

This book's subject matter is very similar to Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (a young Black girl growing up in poverty, sexually abused by her dad) but it doesn't come close. The writing tries to impress but is mired with obscurity, so much so that I had to reread certain passages two and three times to figure out the meaning. In the end all the reading and rereading (mostly on incidences of sexual abuse) just simply isn't worth the effort.

I desperately wanted this book to rise above what I call 'abuse porn'--long, pointless passages about a main character's physical and sexual degradation that really don't add anything to the plot, nor does it enlighten you to any new information from the character's viewpoint. Meanwhile, it seems to revel in nasty details, a kind of gratuitous show. That was this book's experience. No bueno.