Meteors in August: A Novel

by Melanie Rae Thon

Charged by lyrical prose and vivid evocations of a more-than-human world, Meteors in August proves itself a magnificent debut, a tale of despair and salvation in all their many forms

Lizzie Macon is seven when her father drives a Native American named Red Elk out of their valley and comes home with blood on his clothes. The following year, her older sister, Nina, cuts her head from every family photograph and runs away with Red Elk’s son and their unborn child. Nina’s actions have consequences no one could have predicted: jittery reverberations of violence throughout the isolated northern Montana mill town of Willis. Sparks of racial prejudice and fundamentalist fever flare until one scorching August when three cataclysmic events change the town—and Lizzie’s family—forever.

Genres: Fiction, American Fiction, Adult Fiction

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Melanie Rae Thon is a Professor of English at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[sumi subramanian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this novel expecting a comfortably melancholic read. A classic bildungsroman that satisfied the urge of any teenage girl to throw themselves into the mind of an angsty, outcast, and lost female protagonist. I, for reasons that I will elaborate on, was awfully wrong. I have read this book twice now, and was equally engrossed both times. I have been trying to verbalize why this happened, as I am not often a book re-reader, but I’ll try to explain.

What I found in Melanie Rae Thon’s novel was an entire universe.

Few books of this genre can create such a layered background inside a claustrophobic environment. It is so impressive to me that through the author’s commitment to shining a harsh and uncomfortable light onto the town of Willis, I walk away with an intimate understanding of dozens of people, a complete portrayal of this town’s history, and the feeling that I’d witnessed it all firsthand. Thon presents this rural and eerie town of Montana as a canvas for this entire universe of hatred, sexual violence, religious fanaticism, queerness, forgiveness, and most thematically resonant, loss. This is fundamentally a story of loss. The violence and terror of loss, but also the mundane and silent way people lose themselves over time. The core of it all is Nina’s disappearance. Through the multiple people that we see grow up, and live, and die, this is emphasized. This almost feels like an epic. Deep and passionate love, and the fleetingness of it all. Insurmountable grief, and the inability to face it. Towns ablaze in fire, and a woman blinding herself in the name of God as she preaches to her rebel constituents -- shaking and begging for salvation. This book was so, so, so much more than what I thought it would be.

One of the most incredible parts of this book to me is the way relationships are crafted and destroyed and rebuilt over time. The portrayal of Lizzie’s parents is astonishingly well done. Her father is an irascible and distant man but is also filled with guilt. The reader watches him try time and again to repent. Shame takes up empty space within their home, with his hat in his hands after a night of drinking, and his eyes unable to meet his daughter or wife. He spends paychecks on the wife of a man he wronged as some skewed form of forgiveness. He shows up to church when he needs to hear that he can still be good. I’ll never forget the opening of this novel, and the depiction of a man so consumed by his own hatred and bigotry sitting with blood on his hands as his children watch from upstairs. They are watching him and forming their own juvenile opinions on the world that eventually grow into destiny. Lizzie’s mother is by far my favorite character. I initially saw her as an enforcer of the home, but ultimately a subservient woman, as she desperately tried to save Lizzie from the fate of her sister. Again, I was wrong. From a young age, she was told the worst thing a man can do is leave. Her decisions are laced with this unrelenting need to hold onto a man becoming slowly consumed by his misery, and it transforms her into a ferociously strong woman that can carry the entire weight of the family. Still, this means resigning herself to the background of the story. Her expressing a deep melancholy in passing conversation and advice towards Lizzie, and sleeping in the bedroom of her dead mother every night create this heartbreaking character of the mother. Every character of this novel is so developed that the progression of time, which I think is around 7-8 years, feels very earned. Passing characters still feel so raw and naked to the reader, as their flaws and shame follow them through Lizzie's narraration and a general fog surrounding the town of Willis. Peering into all these people's lives again feels like this novel crafts an entire universe through the characters.

Melanie Rae Thon's committment to never shy away from the bleak and shameful events emphasize her greater theme of attempting to make any sense of morality in this relentlessly painful world.

[JAMES COYLE · Rating 2 out of 5]

My problem with the book is a lack of a decent plot. There is lots of good, lyrical writing in the book, like the Fire, which is brilliantly depicted. It's the best incident in the book, but it doesn't lead anywhere. Our heroine, Lizzie the narrator of the story is a gawky, shy adolescent who mostly observes the peculiar milieu she finds herself in. It was definitely 'Southern Gothic', akin to the Bobbie Gentry saga, Tallahassie Bridge, but with less conviction. Disappointing, but I stuck with it, so it must have had something; just not sure what ?

[Mark Underwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are bursts of near-poetic talent here and there, but not enough for my ear.

A polished, well-edited effort which was the first novel for this writer.


"Years we spent learning not to fear that lake until the day one more boy toward the irresistible call of water and aimed his plane toward the blue surface. Looking for freedom, he found death. Bubbles poured from his lips s the plane plunged deeper and deeper along the rocky ledges of a trench. On his lover's forehead, a purple bruise the size of an egg would tell her story to the men who dragged her body to shore and stood around her, each one praying that his own daughter might be spared the wrath of love" (p 270).

More of that lyrical stuff, please.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good solid read.

[Michelle]

Listed as Q4 = Exceptional!, P4 = A book everyone wants to read

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gifted writer.