The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 14 January 2014
by Jesmyn Ward
People are still suffering from the devastation of hurricane Katrina, which, we all know, laid waste to a wide swath of the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coastline, and, of course, the legendary city of New Orleans. It was inevitable that literature would spring from that dramatic storm. Last year, the dream-like movie Beasts of the Southern Wild brought to life the damp and impovershed landscape that was so deeply scarred by Katrina. This vividly visual novel will, at least initially, remind the reader of that movie. But this story sprawls more widely, and touches on more broadly sympathetic themes. Our hero, Esch, is a teenaged girl with three brothers, living with their widowed father on a run-down patch of land they call The Pit. As the story opens, middle brother Skeetah is helping his fighting pit bull dog China give birth to her first litter of puppies. It is a searingly vivid scene, and sets the unflinching tone of the rest of the book. It is a sultry summer in the Bois Sauvage. Esch's father is monitoring the approach of a new hurricane, and he is anxious to prepare. Elder brother Randall is hoping to enter a basketball program, and youngest brother Junior tags along with an irrepressible curiosity. Esch watches the world around her with passion and an acute quality of observation. She has been reading the ancient story of Medea, and seeing the behavior of the boys around her through a filter of brutalized motherhood. In fact, the idea of motherhood runs through the story from beginning to end. China births a struggling handful of puppies. The kids miss their beloved mother. Esch is intimate with boys she knows at school, holding them with passion and a colorful appreciation for their tightly knotted muscles shining with sweat in the tropical heat. And Katrina is Mother-Destroyer, like Medea. Ward's descriptions are full of powerful simile and imagery. There is an earthy passion in her characters that feels thick and layered. Inevitibly, the storm comes, but not before two or three other dramatic episodes batter each of these characters, including the dog, in their turn. The storm itself is almost improbably disastrous. An attentive reader will do well to keep in mind the disturbing and maddening imagery we all saw in the days after Katrina swept through. A story so wet, tragic, thick and vividly described as this one will, of course, draw comparisons to Faulkner, especially his story Old Man. Ward approaches his saturated imagery, and at points exceeds his ability to bring certain kinds of people and events to life. We hesitate to predict how one book or another may last through time, but in this case, this reader thinks that this book has the rich and timeless quality that give it potential to endure. Highly recommended.
(For this book, Jesmyn Ward was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for fiction.)