"A Short History of a Small Place"
Feb. 4th, 2005 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiefoeT. R. Pearson's first novel.
From the very first page, I was hearing the cast of "Cookie's Fortune" in my mind. There are a couple of phrases that strike me as distinctively southern: 'moderately polite rage', 'High Baptist'. Also typical of the literary South, one finds industrious idlers, picturesque insanity and tearful laughter.
The most uproarious scene so far is the eventful Christmas pageant with a troublesome camel played by a big dog. (His owner rides on its tails to the plum role of the voice of God.)
The young narrator's mother has been working on the same novel (opening with 'Save when it happened to rain Vanderbank always walked home') each winter for 7 years. Who can blame her?
On the subject of first sentences -- 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'
Any counter-examples? Or is 'happy family' implicitly tautologous?
