Customer Reviews

All the Living: A Novel

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C. E. Morgan's first novel, ALL THE LIVING, ought to be destined to become a classic. It should be read in classrooms, and then again later by people who have soaked up more life experience than young students -- or for that matter, than Aloma, its central protagonist -- so they can better appreciate the hard lessons imparted.

It is Orren, Aloma's lover, who speaks those implacable words (above) about happiness. He is a young man determined to make a go of the tobacco farm he inherited when his mother and brother died. He's tied to the land by grit, grief, duty, and sheer stubbornness, and he wants to do everything by himself. Aloma was three when she lost her parents, so she is as alone in the world as Orren. This, and their primal attraction to each other, is why she agreed to come live on this subsistence farm. But, blessed with musical talent on the piano, she isn't tied to the land in thought or action. She has ambitions for herself. She desires escape from the dreary and lonely life there, and she wishes to expand herself as a pianist. Enter the pastor in nearby Hansonville, who, at Aloma's behest, hires her to play for his church's services. He is single and, again, because Aloma implies it, thinks she is also. But these are not frivolous characters, and this is no salacious melodrama. ALL THE LIVING doesn't shy away from honest sexuality, but it isn't so much concerned with extreme acts of betrayal (erotic or otherwise) as with the subtler, internal struggles of men and women.

Morgan earned a master's degree in Theological Studies and puts it to good use by applying a vibrant undercoat of spiritual philosophy to her novel. The constant opposition between male and female, silence and expression, solitary habits and sharing, outright meanness and passive aggressive tactics highlight the harsh realities about merging as a couple -- particularly when love is such a submerged part of the equation. The author also counters light and dark, drought and deluge, mountains and bottom land to underscore the natural suspense that human beings are additionally dealt by God's creation. Life and death on the farm, and the fundamental tension between survival and higher pursuits contribute too to the characters' grapplings. Happiness, ALL THE LIVING argues, is a superficial goal because existence from moment to moment is a tumultuous and simultaneous wrestling with the beautiful and the ugly. What counts is endurance in commitments and bone-deep unions. The question is, will these people step up to that uncompromising reality?

This novel's crisp, slotted language, redolent with the cadences of Kentucky rural talk, and brimming with both casual and profound insights works economically, at the bone. Morgan wastes no words. She casts light and shadow with a steady and wise hand, leaving us to see stark contrasts and rough splendors. ALL THE LIVING, Job-like, questions the ordering of nature and the cosmos. Perhaps more importantly, it meditates on what constitutes human maturity. It SHOULD become a classic.

ALL THE LIVING

Aloma and Orren meet when he is helping deliver supplies to her school. They at once are attracted to each other and begin 'dating'. Their dates, however, consist of having a relationship in his truck, either the truck bed or the back seat.

Aloma has no family to speak of. Her parents died while she was a little girl and her aunt and uncle take her into their already filled home. She begins to attend a mission school and that is where she meets Orren.

Orren is a few years older and wiser than Aloma. He lives on his family farm. He is in the middle of despair; his daddy died while he was a young boy and his brother and mom recently passed in a tragic, awful accident.

Orren is hell-bent on making the farm truly his and making it profitable. He does this out of being strong-willed, but also from feeling guilty and full of grief about his mom and brother. He wants to make this work to a point of obsession, but it is a hard and thankless job trying to run a tobacco farm.

Aloma finishes school and moves out to the farm in the Kentucky mountains with Orren. Does she love him? She thinks so. She moves to the farm and at once feels isolated and alone, not getting much attention from Orren who is too busy trying to make the farm work and still deep in grief. He does love Aloma, but is too busy to tell/show her and down in the tunnel of grief that is so deep he can't seem to climb out.

Aloma sets to fixing up the old and run-down farm house that was in Orren's family. She learns how to cook, tries to help out with the chores, and cleans until there is nothing left to clean. She is alone even with Orren is with her.

She finds a job working at the church playing the piano which is her first love. There she meets the handsome preacher, Bell Johnson, who also works a farm and is single. She finds herself attracted to Bell who talks to her and pays attention to her.

This book is short, only 199 pages. What you get out of this short book is so much about life, living, loss of loved ones, relationships, grief, being lonely. C.E. Morgan wrote a wonderful book and I find that I simply cannot stop thinking about this one.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book. What a super movie this would make! This book would be great for any book clubs or discussion groups. Treat yourself to this book. You will feel the heat of the Kentucky sun, see and smell the tobacco plants growing, feel the frustration from both Orren and Aloma. Do these two stay together? Does Bell Johnson get the girl? Does Aloma stay in this half-horse town, forever lonely? Read this grand little book and find out.

Thank you!

Pam

First off, for those of you who might be confused by the plot description - this is not a romance!

The plot of this slim novel is easily described but it not so simple to explain what the author has done here. The prose is beautiful, unusual and almost poetic. The author's ability to cut to the heart of relationships will hold your interest until the last page. I read this book in a day and was surprised at how few events had actually occured but at how much the characters had been through emotionally.

The story, in brief, is that of orphaned Aloma who is raised by Nuns, has a relationship with Orren and returns with him to his family farm when his family is killed in a car accident. If you are expecting action or steamy romance, you will not find it here. Aloma and Orren may be living 'in sin'( and it does figure prominently in Aloma's mind as something she should be ashamed of), and there may be an 'other man' in the story, but the primary focus of the novel is not romance.

Aloma's bereavement is old and one that she is long used to. When we meet her and Orren he too has been bereaved but she cannot fathom his sense of loss or his mute grief at the death of his family. Never having a place of her own she struggles with his desperate need to cling to the family farm which is withering away before them.

This is a wonderfully well written book and I highly recommend it.

This timeless and beautiful story of a young man and woman eking out a life in Kentucky is one of the more moving, beautiful books I have read in the last five years. Aloma and Orren will rise up from the pages of this book for you, and you'll see them, hear them, smell them. You'll also love them.

There's so much in this slim book; backbreaking work, quiet humor, music, God, the quest for identity, redemption, and through it all, the coming together of two young people, one lost in grief, one yearning to understand her place in the world. Inner and outer landscapes are described in spare, graceful, moving prose. The erotic passages are so beautiful.

I've used the word beautiful too many times in this review and I really don't care. I give this book my highest recommendation possible.

All the Living is filled with gorgeous writing that continually had me stopping to re-read sentences and enjoy the vivid picture that author CE Morgan paints. Reading this book is like stepping into Aloma and Orren's world - you can taste the "blond curls" of dust, and the jarring sound of an ancient piano that was "spoiled like a meat" rings in your ears. Morgan's characters are real people whose actions are a direct result of their limited life experience. As a musician, I especially appreciated Aloma's passion for music and the way that passion impacts her choices throughout the book. CE Morgan has a gift for laying bare the essence of a character. I would highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in beautiful writing.

C.E. Morgan is one of the best new writers I have run across in many years. This, her first novel, beautifully evokes a time and place in the lives of two very young people.

Aloma has very little experience of love, having grown up at a mission school for orphans. She is willing to live with Orren despite his failure to ask her to marry him, and willing to uproot her life for a new one on a struggling, dry Kentucky farm. But as days pass, she begins to realize that many things are wrong about this picture, and that she doesn't know how to make them right.

Orren's idea of love feels typical of many very young men-- it is sealed through Aloma's sexual relationship with him, but involves little understanding of who she is, and little understanding of what really matters to him. He, too, will have to grow if their relationship is to survive.

I noticed that another reviewer dismissed this book as being about two young people "in lust". I absolutely disagree with that assessment. These are two very young people making normal, understandable mistakes as they find their way in life. I think many (if not most) people could recognize parts of their own young selves in Aloma and Orren. They don't have the experience to understand what love means and requires, so they stumble-- sometimes towards real love, and sometimes away from it.

I also disagree with the editorial review which described this novel as "erotically charged"-- it isn't. Orren and Aloma's sexual relationship is practical, immediate, and young-- again, many or most readers will recognize all that is missing there. And that's the author's intention, I think. Only one moment at the end of the book hints at what can be between Aloma and Orren; still, the author handles it honestly. Even when a real commitment is made, they remain immature. At the end of the book we are hopeful, even though the future is unknown for them. Everything about this book feels true to me.

Finally, my favorite aspect of this book is a unique pattern in the story-telling. Ms. Morgan shows amazing psychological and spiritual insight in describing what Aloma is privately thinking as she moves through the events of the story. Aloma and Orren are imperfect human beings, and Morgan's portrait of them is perfectly convincing.

Highly, highly recommended.

In this assured and evocative debut novel set in rural Kentucky, author C. E. Morgan comes closer to conveying the essence of life, as she sees it, than do most other novelists with generations' more experience. Here Morgan recreates the bare bones lives of subsistence farmers who are irrevocably tied to the land, a land which is sometimes fickle in its ability to sustain those who so lovingly tend it. Orren Fenton is just out of college when he inherits the family's tobacco farm upon the deaths of his mother and brother. Three weeks after the funerals, Orren asks Aloma, his young lover, to come back to the farm with him. Aloma, an orphan from the age of three, is a pianist at the school she attended, and she sees this as her chance to begin a whole new life--a real life of her own.

Aloma and Orren are very young, and the work of running the farm is brutal. Orren cannot afford the time to teach the inexperienced Aloma what she needs to know to help him, and Aloma is left to try to strip the floors, wash the walls, and try to make the old family home inhabitable. The piano there is unusable. Before long, these two inexperienced young people are at each other's throats. Aloma feels abandoned all day, while Orren feels that she does not appreciate his work. His suggestion that she practice the piano at a church in town leads to her meeting with a local preacher, Bell Johnson, a single man who is attracted to her and who represents a different way of life.

Within this simple framework, Morgan explores universal themes: one's dreams for the future vs. the brutal realities of the present, new life and the hopes it represents vs. death of loved ones, the feeling that God watches over all vs. the sense that God is more interested in the land than in individuals, and the belief that self-knowledge comes from one's relationships with the outside world vs. the understanding that self-knowledge grows from within. Morgan writes with the deeply religious sense that all life is somehow connected, and that God is part of a continuum that begins with the land, the place where life begins.

The three main characters here--Aloma, Orren, and Bell Johnson--are fully developed, and Morgan does not need to tell us how they feel: their reactions to what is happening to them are so fully realized that the reader knows how they feel. She excels at recreating a person's inner feelings with exactness, and her description of nature, while sometimes gorgeous, is always balanced shortly afterward with realistic images of its fragility. Frequently using nouns as verbs, she compresses images, talking about Aloma "basketing the eggs," about Bell's father agreeing " to reverend the church," and the farm's rooster "tightroping the empty crib."

In the conclusion, Morgan reconciles the conflicts as well as Aloma and Orren might be expected to reconcile them, given their youth, but she leaves it up to them, and the reader, to decide whether they will find self-knowledge as they deal with the challenges in their lives. Sensitive, insightful, and beautifully developed, this portrait of three characters trying to understand themselves and their roles in the wider world is one of the most accomplished novels of the year. n Mary Whipple

C.E. Morgan's "All the Living" embraces the requisits of a well crafted piece- not just an engaging read but a work of vivid art.

In this novel involving the challenges of a young, rural relationship we find the characters Aloma and Orren seeking love and clarity amidst the painful tangles of grief. By virtue of tragedy, Orren inherits a family farm in a year of drought. The difficulties of the farm become analogous to the relationship and its lack of reviving rain. Aloma is left in seach of balance, feeding her love of music along with her need for human love.

It is evident that great heart was invested in bringing the story to life. The vivid descriptions of place, identity, and the honest reality of relationships bring the reader to place seldom found in modern literature. Characters unfold at a pace one might find mirroring elements of their own life. The novel reads like beautiful poetry- paced like a walk through the hills. A beautiful landscape of rugged emotion and humanity.

As a resident of the southern Appalachian mountains I find the personalities in the book to be true to character. The question of one's responsibilities in life and the path one takes is often defined more by what is expected of us than by what our heart desires. The desire for loftier experiences is often tempered by the reality of one's position in life. Morgan's development of characters respects and brings light to the richness of the region.

A well crafted book, "All the Living" is an stirring, engaging read.

I've waited a while to write anything about this novel. For me, "All the Living" is one of those rare books that turns inside your head for weeks after you've finished reading. It's an incredible work. I keep changing my opinion on whether I like Aloma and Orren. They've been thrust into an extremely difficult and adult living situation, but are still children in many ways... and often act like it. They are in the throes of that period of early adulthood where most have the room to freely explore human relationships, both sexual and platonic. Aloma and Orren do not have this luxury. Their physical environment has them tightly boxed and, as a reader, I can feel them suffocating. It's the sort of brink living situation that either forces collapse or induces a surrender to some divine authority. This is an idea that is inherent in Bell's sermons (which are astonishingly written).

Morgan's use of the language is adventurous and, in several places, absolutely breathtaking. The dialogue is pitch perfect.

This book has garnered some buzz in the literary world, and it deserves more. Read it.

I found this book to be incredible, really just incredible. C. E. Morgan has a way of writing that is precise and controlled and yet absolutely expansive and soaring, big enough to capture the wide pastures and narrow mountain valleys of the book's Kentucky setting, and open enough to let us into the hearts of her characters, in all their honesty, beauty and flaws. She uses language in a way that is fresh and innovative, not to show off her skills in linguistic acrobatics, but to share with us a story in all its reality, hurt and grace. I found this book to be absolutely stunning-- nuanced and careful and truthful-- wrestling with what it means to live in a world that is beautiful and tragic and love-filled and betraying, often all at once. I would recommend it to anyone- it is a wonderful read!