Customer Reviews

Birmingham, 35 Miles

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

 

 

James Braziel succeeds in creating a novel with powerful imagery and poignant characters. His main character, Matthew, is caught in a struggle to survive in the devastated South after it is scorched by a hole in the ozone. Longing for and bound to the past, Matthew labors to endure the harsh and brutal conditons of the work camp, refusing to abandon the land of his fathers, a vast desert where buildings and hopes ebb away. In one symbolic scene, Matthew holds and treasures a stolen library book - a book which is deteriorating rapidly into dust. Amid the bleak and uncertain future Matthew faces, Braziel infuses great love, humor, and tenderness. In this poetic and beautiful book, Braziel portrays a world where nothing is permanent, where decay threatens to evaporate all that has been known, where love is meant to be enjoyed for its present joys, where time is frozen, and where the most vivid of all lands is the inescapable, captivating terrain of the human mind.

Imaginatively conceived and beautifully written, this first novel casts its characters and its readers into future landscapes of devastation and waste in the U.S. South, a setting that acknowledges the historical violences of the region's past and yet also presciently forewarns of ecological disasters to come if we do not have the courage to create alternative worlds.

I liked the writing - wasn't thrilled with the story! There were many lyrical, gritty passages in "Birmingham 35 Miles." I felt that I was actually visiting this sere, wind-blown dusty hell of a landscape and I could understand the obsession the main character, Mathew, had with the land and his memories. The descriptive passages were excellent.

Character development and storyline definitely needed work. I couldn't get too involved in the characters' lives or tribulations. Yes, there were pieces here and there that I enjoyed but the story was disjointed, the characters withdrawn and stilted and I didn't like them much, and, therefore, it was difficult to read.

I read the sequel to this book Snakeskin Road and this flip-flopped. I thought the storyline and character development were much better in "Snakeskin Road" but the writing itself did not flow as well or affect me as strongly, either positively or negatively.

I happened to read "Snakeskin Road" first and I actually think it works that way. I don't think it matters in which order you read them. OR maybe that was the whole problem with my reading experience - if I had read this book first, everything would have clicked into place and I would have rated both books 5 stars. But I REALLY don't think so.

Fairly dark melancholy tale of life in Alabama 30 years after a hole in the ozone layer causes the area to turn to a desert plagued by blistering sun that makes it unsafe to go outside for long during daylight and by high winds which cause the sand to get everywhere. The area becomes abandoned by most and those still there are kept there by the government who claim to need people mining clay. The descriptions of the desert wasteland are good and there is a lyrical evocotive quality to the writing but most of the characters are left in the shadow where you don't really get to know them or empathise with what they feel. Matthew, the main character is obviously damaged by living in that environment and by his relationship by his loving but emotionally distant Father. It is never really explained (although a suggestion is given) why the father and uncle never leave as both have passes to cross the "border". Matthew too has the same issue. He won't leave when his father is alive but after his death still won't. The ending seems fairly contrived and I didn't think it was particularly realistic. There is a proper ending (though I don't mind an ending where things are left hanging) so it doesn't leave you wondering what happens next. However, i felt the ending was rather clumsy and the story may have benefitted from things being left hanging.

I can generally find redeeming qualities in most every book I read, but I'm hard pressed to do so with this "novel", which in my humble opinion is poetry thinly disguised as prose. There is no resolution to this story and the "dream" chapters serve no useful purpose. In fact, the entire book is like a sequence of ethereal dreams. The beginning of the story has promise, but about midway, I started to get the feeling that this meandering story was going nowhere. I kept reading, thinking, this HAS to get better, that the ending will provide some meaningful denouement.

Publisher's Weekly compared it to McCarty's "The Road", which this book is similar only in the futuristic, after the apocalypse scenario. I'm not a big fan of "The Road", but it was at least worth the read. This book, not so much; very unsatisfying reading experience.

In 2044, life is a short hard death as the hole in the ozone layer coupled with other human indignities ignored by those who scoffed at the climate crisis. They know Bush pseudoscience has practically destroyed the planet. Anyone born after it was too late only knows of endless heat and incredibly vast dust storms in the southeast dust bowl.

In this world of an arid inferno Mathew Harrison earns a meager living as a migrant worker in and around Fatama, Alabama. He dreams of finding a better life thirty five miles to the north in Birmingham, but that is outlawed for people like him. Instead he and his father toil in government clay mines that the younger Harrison believes is fake but dangerous work that the Feds have come up with to shut up the outsiders; those not residing in the exclusive Saved World where the affluent live. In spite of the hardship conditions, Mat loves his wife Jennifer and feels they have a future because they have received the golden visas allowing them to obtain menial work in the Saved World.

BIRMINGHAM, 35 MILES is an intelligently designed grim futuristic thriller that extrapolates much of the current debate on immigration, wealth distribution and climate especially rising temperatures and droughts into a strong parable of An Inconvenient Truth. The story line is vividly dark painting an ominous future for a much divided United States as dust bowls take over the southeast yet enclosed enclaves for the wealthy and their working class spring up in magnet cities like Birmingham. Readers will appreciate James Braziel's look at a portentous ill America that demands action now or condemn our descendants to hell on earth.


Harriet Klausner