In the local newspaper today, my review of Kate Betterton's debut novel Where the Lake Becomes the River, a book that proved very difficult to encapsulate in 750 words.
The headline of the piece, "As tangled and Southern as kudzu," could've been inferred from my first paragraph, where I suggest that the novel "is long, dense, loosely plotted, moving in several directions, climbing through multiple levels and nurturing ample shadow and mystery."
That sentence got its inspiration from author Nancy Peacock's description of the book as "Lush and tangled as a house covered in kudzu," which I quoted in the review.
Kudzu is an apt but incomplete metaphor for the book, because as Southern as kudzu is, it's also a plant that was imported to the South, wore out its welcome, and now is seen as a noxious weed by many. Betterton's novel has nothing imported, unwelcome or noxious about it.
Instead, as I say in the review, the writing is "surprisingly sparse and direct," an observation I would've loved to be able to back up with quotations, given a longer word count. As it was, I left little scraps of paper on a dozen pages to help me choose one. Here's an example:
The sun was hot. Asphalt patches turned to pools of liquid tar. There wasn't much shade, but my hat kept the sun off. Crickets sang in the weeds. Cattails swayed in the algae-streaked pools below the levee. I picked some ripe purple dewberries. The briars scratched me, but I didn't mind.
Yet the book is long and tangled for sure, and if you are of a metaphysical bent, it will bewitch you. It is not exactly magic realism: I was reminded of Garcia-Marquez at points, and at other points I just thought here is a writer trying to birth a very large and unwieldy-- and worthy-- story, and it must have involved a frightening amount of labor pains.
I would also have loved to include the following longer quotation, for its humor and serious meditation on the nature of stories and storytelling. The narrator is the mystic-like protagonist, Parrish McCullough:
I want to tackle Mama's shoes and beg her to hold me, press my head to her tummy and hear the gurgle of galaxies turning inside, like when she used to read us bedtime stories. If the stories have tragic endings, Mama changes them. In her alternate endings, the Sun King and Marie Antoinette escape the guillotine and flee to Venice. Moby Dick lets the ship go, and crazy old Ahab survives. Henry the Eighth halts the executioner's axe and pardons Anne Boleyn. The English royals rescue their Romanov cousins and give them a farm in Kent. Angels in robes embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis (even angels should accessorize) rescue Joan of Arc, who retires to the country and raises honeybees in lavender fields that stretch to the horizon. Mama doesn't fool us-- we've read the real versions and know what really happens. We'd much rather hear the gory details of chopped-off heads, ships smashed to smithereens, assassins horrified to see their bullets bounce off the czarinas' diamond-stuffed dresses, and Saint Joan burned to a crisp. We go along because we know she wants to protect us from life's tragedies.
There are levels and levels here. The reader doubts the verisimilitude of children young enough for bedtime stories yet precocious enough to know the real stories of Henry the Eighth and Moby Dick. Yet there is the ring of truth to a mother who wants to protect her babies by smoothing over troubling stories.
There is an analogy here to Betterton and her readers. She is telling a story of magic and metaphysics that will strain the credulity of some. A lot of the book involves death and other disturbing things. But the overall feel of it is of a benevolent universe. Maybe Betterton is letting us know that she could've written her book a different way, but she wanted to protect us from life's tragedies.
Well, enough reviewing. Get the book, read it, and tell me what you think.
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