Customer Reviews

Back to Wando Passo: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I haven't read anything quite like it. In places, Payne goes on a little longer than I wish he had, but the truth is, this book wrecked my life for two and a half days. I resented everything that took me away from reading it. After finishing, I sat speechless for thirty minutes. It's that rare combination of both literary and a page turner. Gorgeous prose, a compelling plot, marvelously full, flawed characters, and such original ideas. I love the way he handles issues of mental illness, the beauty and pain of marriage, dreams lost and redesigned, and most of all what he's saying about race, which feels not just interesting, but important. And the sex scene. I'll say no more.

If I'm lucky, I find one great novel each year -- a big meaty novel I fall upon and into, give up days of my life for, finish reading but never really emerge from. Think of novels like The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber, The Bone People by Keri Hulme.

Now read Wando Passo, best described as two novels intertwined and two unforgettable characters: Ransom Hill, a hyper-charged 21st-century man desperate to regain his wife and reform his life; and Adelaide ("Addie") DeLay, a Civil-War-era Southern wife intent on finding what is forbidden, that is to say love.

Mystery, love story, culture clash -- all that, plus Payne's gorgeous lyric prose, particularly, to my taste, in Addie's story.

Wando Passo might cost you a week, and afterward more weeks if you've not read Payne's earlier novels, including my favorites, Ruin Creek and Early for the Dance.

What a joy to know that American publishers can still recognize a great novel.

Talk about central character Ransom Hill having a journey...reading the two intertwined stories of David Payne's novel BACK TO WANDO PASSO was an absorbing, enlightening, entertaining, instructive, deeply intriguing journey for this reader with a thrilling concluding event in chapter fifty-nine. Mr. Payne demonstrated what the sages have been saying for eons -that life is an interconnected web of relationships in this corporeal realm as well as in other realms, whether we are aware of it or not. Shakespeare said as much in The Tempest, "what's past is prologue".

Mr. Payne has thrown just about everything in this book - love, sex, marriage, violence, mystery, parenting, war, passion, a new twist on the proverbial kitchen sink - a pot.....and that always sensitive, ever-present, often explosive, confusing, emotional and frequently under-discussed topic, race - America's third rail and vulnerable solar plexus.

The humanity in this novel is profound and his observations of human frailties are penetrating and beautifully, often poetically, expressed. Mr. Payne doesn't shy away from its dicey complexity and he articulates their many facets clearly.

Most especially, I appreciated the spirituality running throughout his story and the questions he raises about how to live and how to treat "the other". He puts his finger right on the shame of the South's legacy and calls it by its first name.

I'm from Massachusetts and my own brief seven-year experience living and working as a theater artist in the South in Richmond, Virginia (the belly of the beast?), Montgomery, AL, Southeast Florida and throughout North Carolina affirms what I believe Mr. Payne's novel lays out - that for many, black and white, the lingering imbalance in the regla (proper order) of the relations between them ruptured so long ago is still a live, pulsating thing needing to be addressed.

Inferred in this novel is, I believe, a plea for a better way, a return to regla, perhaps no better expressed than in the words of poet Qwendolyn Brooks:

"We are each other's harvest
We are each other's business
We are each other's magnitude and bond."

BACK TO WANDO PASSO is a substantial work of artful storytelling and is a gem.


Benny Sato Ambush
Profesional Stage Director, Producer, Educator

I really wanted to love this novel, as I have Payne's others. But that's not quite what happened. I didn't hate it. I didn't stall out half-way or wish certain aspects of the narrative would go away. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit dissapointed. Sure, there were some provoking points and questions raised about race; the historical stuff was interesting; and there was plenty of regional appeal (I actually live in this area of the country). And finally, I thought the ending was ambitious, appropriately bizzare and rather commendible. I just didn't find the characters as alive or insightful, or the story as engaging as all were in Ruin Creek, Gravesend, or Dance. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if this book hadn't drawn so much critical attention (much more than the other's it seems). Maybe my expectations were skewed. Maybe I'm crazy. But am I the only one?

Two random beefs:
1.) Are Claire DeLay and Day Shaughnessy sisters? Cause they sure seemed like the same character.
2.) What the hell is with the StarWars similie midway through the book? I know it's a minor thing, but seriously, someone should have thought better of that.

David Payne proves once again why his books are so highly anticipated. The parallel story lines in Wando Passo are utterly compelling; the intrigue the author leaves at the end of each transition precludes putting the book down. Simply put, another wonderful read by one of America's very best writers.

If you read only one book this summer, read Wando Passo. It is the type of novel you will want to read slowly. Not because of any complexities, but because you will not want it to end.

Payne paints his characters so vividly, you will think you've met them in person. I thought about Ransom, Claire, and Marcel, just to name a few, long after I had read the final page.

David Payne is a gifted writer who has taken the time to know his characters, and because of this, his readers will know them as well.

BACK TO WANDO PASSO is a wild, truly epic, ride through Southern history, plantation life, slavery, The Civil War, and black magic. This novel is as big as Gone With The Wind, in scope and subject, but it's not Scarlett and Tara -- it's Ransom Hill, a burned-out rock star stumbling into a new century, yet haunted by the Civil War-era past of his wife's ancestral home, Wando Passo, a slave-era rice plantation in South Carolina.

Ransom's modern-day story, trying to pull his life together and save his marriage and family, parallels a Civil War family saga of betrayal and deception, told through intermittent flashbacks.

There is so much to this book, you can get completely lost at times, especially when the author throws in poetic allegories and allusions, and an abundance of Spanish, Cuban language and tradition. It all comes to a stunning conclusion, a breathtaking resolution for all the various characters whose lives are intertwined.

BACK TO WANDO PASSO is a novel that will stay with you -- haunting -- if you can make it through.

-- Sherri Caldwell, Co-Author: The Rebel Housewife Rules (Conari Press, 2004)
Humor Columnist & Reviewer at RebelHousewife.com.

This book had the potential to be a favorite of mine. It had everything I love; family drama, big old houses, historical romance with a nice helping of gothic-type mystery. As others have said, Payne's writing style is beautiful, tight but lyrical, he's able to create an image with fitting southern flavor.
However, it is a few misplaced speeches and the structuring of the plot that detract from this novel.
I appreciate the discourse on race these characters have, but there are scenes where it just doesn't seem fitting. Ransom, while drunk, high and sitting with a man with whom he is very angry, is suddenly able to give a clearly organized two-page speech on his views on race, as if he were debate club. After 300 pages of a man who is clearly confused about his views, this seems like a very strange time for the light bulb to turn on.
The conversation between Claire and Shante about the habits of relationships seemed straight out a therapist's office, as well.
The plot of the novel was interesting, I enjoyed the shifting of chapters between Harlan/Claire and Addie/Harlan/Jerry. However, I thought the ending of the novel was rushed. After nearly two thirds of the novel had been devoted to the new and changing relationship between Addie and Harlan, it was strange to see only a few paragraphs devoted to Addie and Jerry's relationship. There could have been a bit more growth and romance.
I wont explain the ending but the "moment" there seemed too tidy as well, especially after all the vines intertwining family history, hoodoo, love and hate.
I think the novel could have benefited from another hundred pages or so.

Basically this story is about a selfish, self-absorbed, washed-up, bigoted man who returns home to Wando Passo (his estranged wife's family estate) after he has the epiphany that he still loves his wife. In reality, I think he just didn't know what else to do and had run out of willing women to bed. For some bizarre reason she takes him back even though she doesn't appear to like him very much because he cheated, drank and never provided for them. Maybe she did it for the little kids they share? If it were me I would've let the door hit him square in the youknowwhat on the way out but I'm mean like that. Anyway, here he comes all expecting to be greeted with open arms but things don't work out quite that way. They fight, he embarrasses himself with his racial slurs against his wife's best male friend, and they fight some more. The book then flashes back to the wife's ancestors (sorry, I'm horrid with names) who were living at Wando Passo during racial tensions and civil unrest. Here we meet Abigail (or Addi?), a naive new bride who realizes the man she married (without knowing) is quite a beastly man and not in the "cool, he's a werewolf" kind of plot twist either. He's a bigot, jealous of his half black brother and thoroughly unlikable. She's struggling with her mistake and submits to him out of propriety but is filled with dread. The book then alternates back and forth between these two depressing storylines.

As the story plodded on the characters are rounded out quite a bit more and aren't as one dimensional as they seemed at the beginning of the book. Ran (the washed up loser dad) suffers from bipolar and is off his meds which explains much of his earlier behavior. It is Claire, his wife, who actually becomes a bit more of an unlikable character. Well, it's a toss up really because both of these people do things that annoyed me. A murder mystery and some voodoo/hoodoo/witchcraft is thrown in to liven things up which works for me because all of the daily drama was becoming a bore. Back in the past Addie struggles with life as a plantation owner and faces many ethical dilemmas, including her growing feelings for her husband's half brother. It's pretty engrossing but she too makes choices that annoy me.

I should also note that there is too large section of this book written in another language (Spanish, I think) without a translation. It was difficult to make heads or tails of the scenes because it's been over 20 years since I took Spanish.

This book was exhausting. The mystery ended as I thought it might and the modern day triangle wasn't as prettied up in the end as I thought it would be which was a nice surprise. Overall the book was a sometimes engrossing, sometimes infuriating read. It's not a book I'd read again by choice.

And on and on and on. If you can put up with flipping centuries every other chapter then you are a better reader than I. Plus trying to read an entire chapter in Italics??? The story was totally unbelievable and the characters didn't even line up. How does a drugged out, bipolar, washed up rock star fit into the Carolina deep south? And how stupid is his wife to allow him to watch the children? And even more unbelievable is that she slept with their black male friend "just because". She is from Charleston gentility??? If she is the Southern lady as portrayed, she wouldn't be having sex for the sport of it. And I prefer to read in English. Too much conversation in a foreign language! Besides the characters, the whole plot just doesn't work well. Trying to parallel the two time zones eventually fell flat.