Tag: Southern Gothic

Day 853: The Little Friend

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Cover for The Little FriendI didn’t decide to read The Little Friend until recently. That was because I was one of the few people who didn’t like Donna Tartt’s first book, The Secret History. I thought The Goldfinch was wonderful, however, so I decided to give The Little Friend a try.

This novel shows influences from practically every modern southern novel I’ve ever read, a bit of the Comptons from Faulkner, a touch of To Kill a Mockingbird, and lashings of Southern Gothic. The novel’s world is a harsh one, although not as twisted as that of Flannery O’Connor.

The main character is 12-year-old Harriet Dufresnes, a bookworm and misfit in 1970’s Alexandria, Mississippi. She is from a once-wealthy family whose rotting mansion, no longer in the family’s possession, is out in the countryside. Harriet lives in town with her mother Charlotte and sister Allison. But whatever future they might have had was prematurely blighted by the death of Harriet’s brother Robin, at the age of nine, 12 years earlier. Robin was found hanging from the tree at the edge of the yard, and his murder has never been solved. Their household has been made miserable by the ceaseless mourning and lassitude of Harriet’s mother.

Harriet is facing a long, lonely summer when she decides to avenge the death of her brother. She understands from the family’s maid Ida that Robin and Danny Ratliff were bitter enemies, so she decides that Danny, who is now a small-time criminal and meth addict, must be the murderer. She begins stalking him with the help of her best friend, Hely.

The Ratliff family embodies almost cartoonish O’Connor Southern Gothic. Farish, the oldest brother, is a half-crazed and hyperactive meth cooker and dealer. Although he talks about fighting in the Vietnam War, he spent it in a mental institution and is said to have calmed down since he had a head injury. Eugene is a street corner preacher who is inept at preaching. Curtis is a sweet-natured boy of limited mental capacity, and Gam, the boys’ grandmother, relentlessly favors Farish and does her best to undermine the other brothers’ efforts to leave their lives of crime.

Danny is rather a more tragic figure than anything else, but I was more interested in Harriet’s life than in her interactions with the Ratliffs. That situation provides the tension and danger of the plot, but I was sometimes bored by it and other times found it grotesquely funny.

Harriet’s family is the essence of dysfunction. Her mother is almost completely self-obsessed, spending all her time mourning Robin. She neglects her two daughters and stays in her bedroom. Harriet is dependent on Ida for any attention or care in a house that is only held from chaos by Ida’s efforts. Allison, although 16, is timid and milky and almost doesn’t exist as a character.

The other influences on Harriet are her grandmother Edie and her great-aunts. They are really the only points of stability in her life, especially her great-aunt Libby.

By and large, I was impressed by the energetic writing and the imagination of The Little Friend. The parts I don’t admire as much are the forays into an almost clichéd Southern Gothic of the Ratliff brothers. Still, I found it hard to put down this novel.

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Day 711: Mother of Pearl

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Mother of PearlSet in the 1960’s but seeming more appropriate to decades before that, Mother of Pearl is a sort of Southern Gothic mashup. It features a love affair between near relations, a half-Indian seeress, the town slut, a self-educated African-American man, and some other stereotypes. It is energetically written but sometimes so floridly that I wanted to put it down. Still, it captured my attention enough to give it a mild recommendation. For a novel that starts out dark and unusual, it ends up being surprisingly sentimental and unlikely.

Even Grade is an African-American factory worker. He recently helped his older neighbor Canaan after a teenage white boy hit him in the head with a bottle. His deepest sadness comes from the knowledge that his mother abandoned him as a baby and he was raised in an orphanage.

Valuable Korner, a white teenager, was also left by her mother, the town slut. Her mother disappeared after her birth and left her to be raised by her grandmother Luvenia, returning just before Luvenia died. Since then, Valuable has shared the house with her mother and whichever man she is with.

Barely in puberty, Valuable is about to turn her life-long friendship with neighbor Jackson into a full-blown love affair. What neither of them knows is that they are half brother and sister. The adults who are aware of this seem criminally oblivious, except one.

That one is Joody Two Sun, a half-Indian healer and seeress who lives in a hut by the creek. She and Even are lovers. When Valuable and Jackson come to consult her, she can immediately see their relationship and fate but chooses to say nothing.

Joleb, a friend of Jackson, lives with his father, who is as dumb as a post, and his older brother Burris, who tries to see God by standing on a railway trestle as the train approaches. Their mother also lives with them, but she has been in a vegetative state since Joleb was born. He feels closer to Grace, an African-American woman who cares for his mother and nursed him when he was a baby, than he does to his own family.

I had some problems with this novel, mostly involving the unlikelihood that Valuable, with her attitude toward her mother’s affairs, would plunge into her own love affair as soon as she hits puberty, especially as naive as she is. But then again, if she didn’t, there would be no novel. In addition, I can say no more, but the ending of the novel is very unlikely, ignoring legalities, for one.

Still, I enjoyed this book, especially liking the African-American characters, who seem better defined than the white ones. Valuable’s Aunt Bea, who with her lesbian lover Neva takes her in when her mother finally leaves town, seems to have no personality at all. Neva definitely has one but it is mostly destructive. Joleb, although he gets more interesting, seems like a cartoon character at times. And frankly, the two star-crossed lovers are pretty much cardboard figures.

I was interested particularly in Even and Grace. Joody is too much over the top at times, and Canaan only seems to be there to anchor Grace.

Readers commented that they were not taken with the book until about 100 pages in. That was my experience as well. In fact, if I hadn’t read those comments, I may not have kept reading the book.

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