Customer Reviews

Four Spirits

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Naslund uses her sensuous language to bring alive events surrounding some of the most shameful events in our national history. Her telling of the story of the four little girls bombed to death in a Birmingham church concentrates on those who were there -- those affected by these tragic deaths in many different ways. In short and sparkling chapters Naslund brings these characters to life: Not only those struggling to right the wrongs, but those responsible for committing them. Should you read this book? Yes. If you were not alive during the tumult of the early sixties, you should read this book and think. Yes. If you were alive you should read this book and remember. Always remember. For it is ever true that those of us who do not remember our history will find a way to repeat it.

Naslund, with unimpeachable skill, fictionalizes the horrors, creates recognizeable humans to populate her story, and makes an imperative of remembrance. Naslund's skill is formidable. She is a writer to pay attention to. She knows the human heart in darkness and in light.

Having lived and grown up in Birmingham, AL during this period of its history, this book was of particular interest to me. Ms. Naslund has captured the flavor, the ectasy, the heartbreak of this time in a very ingenious manner, focusing on the lives of some ten to twelve individual people during this time of turmoil and heartbreak. Her chapters are short, which makes the book more compelling and difficult to put down, and the ending is truly magnificent. Ms. Naslund with her latest book continues to add to her reputation as a tremendously gifted and deeply sensitive writer. It is truly a breathtaking and unforgettable novel.

I just finished "Four Spirits" this weekend--after TWO MONTHS of reading. In part, it took me this long because it is over 500 pages; in part, because I kept it at work and only read on my lunch break; and, in part, because the emotional weight of this story is so intense that it just isn't material that you breeze through...you have to absorb its impact if you are to reap the full benefits of the experience.

Naslund brilliantly weaves real events (such as the bombing of a Birmingham church in which four little girls perished) and real people (Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the civil rights movement) into a rich tapestry of fictional characters and events. Through these fictional characters, we see and feel the impact of the horrific events of this shameful period in our history.

In the beginning, I had a hard time with the format--each short chapter was about a different character, so it might be many chapters before the storyline you were most interested in would resume. I understood that it was necessary to introduce the characters fully and deeply enough that I would care about them when the tragic events of this story start unfolding. In that, Ms. Naslund was very successful.

It must be said that this book is very difficult to read--not journalistically or linguistically, but emotionally. That is not to say it is a story that should not be told or read. I am deeply grateful that I have experienced it and yet, there were times when I said "I can't take any more" because the intensity of emotion and piling-on effect of tragic events was just too much (the irony that the people in Birmingham--and all across the South--in the 1960s may have been feeling the same way is not lost on me).

I have read many sad books. I have read many books that have made me weep, that have made my heart ache. But this...this goes beyond that. Reading "Four Spirits" is like going into battle...it is not a passive experience. I am better for having read it, but it was not without a price.

In the author's note, Sena Naslund writes that she wanted to "write about the acts of courage and tragedy" that took place in Birmingham where she was a college student. I feel she did a very good job of portraying the difficult choices people involved in the civil rights movement had to make and the effect of those choices and the courage it took. For this, the book is worth reading.

I had difficulty however with keeping track of the various characters and who they were, for some reason. It is a long book, but even by the end I often felt myself saying, "now who is that again". I just didn't feel engaged with the characters, they are not ones who will stick with me.

I have lived in Birmingham, AL since 1977 so the events described in this book remain a living legacy. Unfortunately that legacy is one both of shame and ongoing hostility between the races. Ms. Naslund has intended this book to contribute to the healing of our community, but only time will tell if she has succeeded.

One thing is certain, anyone who was not alive when these events occurred should read this book. Up through November 22, 1963, I was as mesmorized as I remember being when I read "To Kill A Mockingbird" at age 14. I have to say I found the second half disappointing but equally compelling.

I would also recommend that anyone wanting to understand these events better should see Spike Lee's documentary "4 Little Girls."

Eight of us read this novel for our book group. All of us appreciated the history lesson and Southern perspective on an issue that for us, growing up in mostly white neighborhoods of the Pacific Northwest, was not as visible.
However, as a novel, we were at times disillusioned. Too many characters left a lot of lives half constructed and then going no where. Even the book's title was given scant time. It felt as if the author had numerous starts and stops to ideas when putting the book together. Relationships between several of the characters seemed to take off and then end abruptly.
Those of us who read Naslund's Ahab's Wife were especially disappointed. In the end we all felt a good editor could have made this book a lot less frustrating and time consuming to read.

"Four Spirits," Sena Jeter Naslund's majestic, reflective and somber recreation of a pivotal period during the civil rights movement, reminds us that once upon a time, unknown moral giants lived amongst us. While inspirational giants such as Martin Luther King, Jr., served as our national moral compass, anonymous men, women and children -- some of whom would become martyrs to the cause of racial justice -- transformed King's lofty rhetoric to concrete reality. Their individual acts of conscience placed them at enormous risk, yet they summoned, from the depths of their personal convictions, the courage to act on principled belief.

Naslund's novel interweaves the lives of the foot soldiers of the movement; she unflinchingly exposes their fears, ambivalences and doubts about personal valor, the efficacy of non-violence and the possibility of creating a society based on racial egalitarianism. Each character has an integrity and a wholeness, a core set of values, which make them not only understandable to us, but believable. "Four Spirits," therefore, is a work that is much greater than the sum of its parts. At its best, the novel is an evocation of the spirit of possibility that animated African-American and white men, women and children to sacrifice everything for an idea whose very nature exemplifies our national purpose. As the characters grapple with their own demons, ranging from profound personal loss to serious character weakness, Naslund effects a gripping narrative of a city, Birmingham, Alabama, locked in the grip of the greatest social movement for change in the twentieth century.

Stella, who survived a horrific childhood automobile accident that claimed the lives of her family, describes herself as "somebody who wanted to change...to live more fully." She longs for a "broader" scope for her life and discovers it in the movement. She befriends the wheelchair bound Cat Cartwright, who in turn finds the inner resolve to become a freedom fighter. These two college-aged white women become colleagues with the defiant Christine, a single-mother of three, who eagerly seizes the opportunity to teach citizenship classes in the evening at an African-American college experimenting with an integrated staff. Their leader, the charismatic Lionel Parish, unsuccessfully attempts to exorcise his sexual appetite while calmly exercising leadership under the most extreme circumstances. All share an unspoken idealism; each discovers the strength to resist evil non-violently.

"Four Spirits" is far from a flawless work. A talented writer, Naslund often permits her admiration of a neatly turned phrase to interfere with her narrative; the novel suffers tends to be overwritten. Some pivotal characters, such as the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, have important roles early on and then inexplicably disappear. Other characters, especially the nefarious Klansman Ryder Jones, are caricatures. The semi-illiterate Jones, for example, not only violently abuses his wife but is a bungling bomber. His evil is lessened by his abject stupidity. Naslund also permits one of her characters (a child during the movement) to reflect on the early 1960s as an adult. This unwelcomed change of tense disrupts the narrative and unfairly gives us access to only one character's subsequent evaluation of the period.

Nonetheless, "Four Spirits" demands attention. Its uncompromising perception of racism and its equally stirring remembrance of uncommon courage remind readers that the genuine giants of the civil rights movement were regular citizens, who, for reasons both personal and political, felt as if the entire history of the nation would pivot on their actions. Their linkage of thought and deed, of conscience and commitment, in Naslund's sure hands, are moving tributes to what the United States should be.

The writing is equally beautiful to Ahab's Wife, but the story seems to be begging for a plot triangle. It's hard to understand why Naslund would have let this be published in such raw form. Characters make brief appearances and then disappear for pages. Chapters read almost like separate vingettes. Makes me wonder if publishers were pushing Naslud to meet a printing date: It is so peculiarly inferior to her other story, and odd when, clearly, her writing standards are so very, very high.

I just finished reading Four Spirits last night, on - quite fittingly (and, incidentally) - Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2005. It was NOT a difficult read, nor a slow one...perhaps four evenings? Unfamiliar with Ms. Naslund's writing until quite recently, I had finished Ahab's Wife, found it amazing, and quickly purchased Four Spirits, settled in for a good read before the winter fire, and immediately saw that I was headed for a powerful lesson in American history - one that I should have already been taught, having been raised in Montgomery, Alabama in the 60's. My childhood was comfortable and overly sheltered, though, and I was for a large part unaware of the large scale of atrocities that so many, many innocent people suffered for the name of justice and freedom. This fine novel, in delicate vignettes, guides the reader - quietly at first, then boldly into what is horrific and, as always with tragic history, certain and unstoppable in its events - through and past a series of happenings that are excruciating to read about (and this, from the safety of distance - god help the ones who truly suffered), shameful from this side to know, but necessary to understand so that this world can be changed into the better place it needs to be today. I for one am fuller for having read this book, and have shared with my teenaged sons some of the knowledge that I learned from its pages. Thank you, Ms. Naslund, for what turned out to be a fine, if at times difficult, education.

Set in Birmingham, Alabama during the early 1960's FOUR SPIRITS is an engrossing novel of how the Civil Rights movement not only affected individuals residing in the city but also the city itself. Birmingham was one of the hotbeds of demonstrations, bombings, and protests during this era, and the lives of those living within the city were greatly affected. This novel focuses on individuals who are deeply affected by the events occurring around them. Written from the perspective of a variety of characters, this novel provides the reader with a multitude of glimpses of the violence embedded in their daily activities. Each character is brought to life, and the story is three-dimensional and highly textured. Embedded in the plot are notorious incidents (i.e., the death of the four young girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church) and grand figures (i.e., Martin Luther King, Jr.) but the novel remains authentic and real. FOUR SPIRITS is a well-written account of recent American history, and is worthy of all the praise it has received thus far. In spite of the cliché, this novel was certainly difficult to put down and I finished it in record time. Enjoy.