A Friday Book Page Bonus!

Bonus reviews from our Sunday paper as well as local events.  Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

 

WHAT IS A MAN?

“A LESSON BEFORE DYING”

Ernest J. Gaines, 1993

Featured book in the Big Read program

By Erica Smith The Virginian-Pilot

Just what is it that makes a man?

Ernest J. Gaines explored that question two decades ago in “A Lesson Before Dying,” a tale of social justice and personal responsibility. That exploration is no less relevant, masterful and exhilarating today than in 1993 – making this novel perfect not only for Black History Month but also as the featured book in Virginia’s Big Read program.

The tale is told without pretension but with a subtlety and craftsmanship that make it compelling for readers of all backgrounds, from those who have experienced its world to those sheltered from it.

The plot: In Jim Crow Louisiana, a largely illiterate black field hand named Jefferson is convicted of killing a white man. The evidence is murky...

“I want a man to go to that chair,” Miss Emma said.

An odd hope, it would seem, but under Jim Crow it’s one of the most subversive imaginable. Denying men the status of manhood, the same rights and privileges accorded those in power, has always been a tool of conflict. The means might be legal, economic, psychological, physical. No? Think “Sissy.” “Homo.” Or worse. Or, here, “boy.” Deny a man the status of manhood – say, the right to defend his family and himself, to make a living, to vote, to read, to sit on a jury – and you seek to neutralize him. Defy such a strategy and you may die … or you may change the system...

 

To read the complete review, be sure to pick up Sunday’s Virginian-Pilot.

Books editor Erica Smith focused on gender in American history as a graduate student at the College of William and Mary.

Big Read in Virginia

The program encourages communities to read, and discuss, a single book together. This year’s program runs through May. For more, including events: www.virginia.edu/vfh/bookcenter/bigread/index.html and www. neabigread.org

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A heartfelt collection of Virginia people

 

“IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY”

Clifford Garstang

Press 53.

204 pp. $14.

 

By Dana Staves

Special to The Virginian-Pilot

Follow the girl with the pink hair. Her name is Tina, and she shows up in almost every story in Clifford Garstang’s debut collection of interconnected stories, “In an Uncharted Country.”

Sometimes the main character, sometimes noticed by a narrator only as “the fuchsia-haired Madonna,” Tina is one of a cast of characters that forms the community in the fictional Virginia town of Rugglesville – which has echoes of Garstang’s own Shenandoah Valley.

Garstang is to be commended for his restraint. Rather than asking the reader to believe that everybody knows everybody else, characters notice each other by appearance and mention each other in passing, cutting down on the folksy feeling of Small Town, USA...

 

This collection achieves something of a rarity in literary fiction: happy endings, each full of hope. That sense of hope is refreshing. At times, however, a happy ending comes at the price of tension...

For the complete review, be sure to read the Sunday Pilot.

Dana Staves, an MFA student in creative writing at Old Dominion University, specializes in Southern fiction.

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Threads of 'village life’ unspool in fluid lines

 

 

“A VILLAGE LIFE”

Louise Glück

Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

72 pp. $23.

 

 

By Edith R. White

Special to The Virginian-Pilot

This slim book of brief poems, “A Village Life,” is the 11th collection by Louise Glück , the award-winning poet who teaches at Yale. Her previous books have won the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize and numerous other honors.

Yet there is nothing pretentious about her writing. She does not use rhyme. Lovely long, fluid lines, punctuated by a pause or a short staccato, flow with an inner rhythm that invites the reader to enjoy them read aloud...

In spare language, Glück selects the vivid details that describe adolescents feeling their first temptations to touch, young lovers in the fire of passion and aging lovers sensing a new tenderness. Human life is examined from the point of view of a bat and an earthworm. Sound and smell and taste are all a part of the picture...

To read the complete review, be sure to pick up Sunday’s Pilot

Edith R. White is a Norfolk librarian, storyteller and artist.

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Footnotes:

 

For the complete list of footnotes be sure to pick up a copy of Sunday’s Pilot.

“Buy Ketchup in may” author is at it again-

Mark Di Vincenzo, the Newport News writer whose “Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon” was a New York Times best-seller for several weeks late in the year, has a contract for another book. Di Vincenzo said he has a tentative publication date of April 2011 for “There’s Wood in Your Turkey Bacon: And 333 Other Fascinating Facts That Will Make You Smarter, Safer and Healthier” (Harper Paperbacks). Industry newsletter Publishers Lunch described the deal as “very nice” – $50,000 to $99,000. Meantime, Di Vincenzo said by e-mail, “Ketchup” is doing well, with nationwide publicity and editions set for Russia, Italy and Japan. (VP)

 

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EVENTS

Elizabeth Childs-Johnson , ODU Art Department, signs “The Jade Age: Early Chinese Jades in American Museums,” noon Monday , University Village Bookstore, 4417 Monarch Way, Norfolk. (757) 423-2308.

Tim Seibles, poet at ODU, reads from “Maybe Heaven,” persona poems in the voices of major abolitionists, 12:30 to 2 p.m., ODU’s Virginia Beach Higher Education Center, 1881 University Drive (signing, reception). (757) 368-4100.

Margaret Edds reads from and signs “Finding Sara: A Daughter’s Journey,” 11:30 a.m. Wednesday . Prince Books, 109 E. Main St., Norfolk. (757) 622-9223 . Also: 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Page After Page, Elizabeth City, N.C. (252) 335-7243.

Debbie Phelps, mother of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, discusses and signs “A Mother for All Seasons,” noon April 10, Chesapeake Bay Academy, 821 Baker Road, Virginia Beach. Lunch. $20, $25. (757) 497-6200.

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