Customer Reviews

Holly

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

 

 

The beginning and the end of this book are brilliant. The beginning evokes time and place in a manner not unlike A Thousand Acres or a Faulkner novel: you can feel the dust, the heat, the hatred. No one is doing anything wrong, but goddamn no one is doing anything right either. And even though you know the end, you dread it while rushing to get to it. I would like to have known more about Elias, the black soldier who captures Holly's heart. I would like to have known more about the Hill family's reaction after the lovers' attempted escape. (I would liked to have known less about Holly's angst after Billy's death -- we got the point, let's meet Elias.) The issue which Mr. French tackles -- race relations between the sexes -- is so very sensitive, and yet Mr. French does not flinch . But I don't want to dwell so much on the plot, for as in most tragedies, it is predictable. Instead, savor the language and the poetry of the prose, for it is as lovely as the red flower Elias paints on Holly's turtle rock.

I am not saying this novel is without merit, but I was struck by what I thought was the unlikelihood of an educated articulate man like Elias falling in love with a birdbrain like Holly. The book has pages and pages of utterly vacuous conversation between Holly and her equally mentally challenged fried Elsie which adds nothing the the book except to make it have more pages. Nor was I entranced by the omission of the final g on words ending in g except when some smart person was talking or thinking, nor the use of Um for I'm and similar devices intended to convey speech by North Carolinians, but which I thought merely interfered with readability. There is a town called Supply in North Carolina, but the novel indicates there is a courthouse in Supply--but Supply is not the county seat of the county in which it is located. I have never been to Supply but I wonder if someone could tell us whether there are places in and about Supply which correspond with the novel's description. I presume there are, but it would be interesting to know more about the relationship between the real town of Supply and the fictional town so called in this book.

I found myself nearly in tears at the ending of this one, just like I was at the ending of "Billy." While reading, I was put off with the "tas," "yas," and "Ahs" throughout the book, but I found the story pretty interesting, and the pacing, while a little slow in the beginning, at warp speed in the last half of the book.

I did not like Holly. The spunk she possesses in the first half of the book, she immediately loses when she meets and falls in love with Elias. And Elias, I could not wrap my mind or heart around a male character who falls in love so quickly with someone who indirectly calls him a racial slur. Sure the war left him with scars, but this little backwoods girl calls you a name you profess your undying love for her? Elsie, well, I knew what she was going to do and what was going to happen when she did it. There could have been no other real action for her to take. The words French created for Elias' mother, Marcel and father, Alex in the closing chapters are what turned on the waterworks.

Not better than "Billy," but much, much better than "I Can't Wait On God." Worth checking out of the library.

this novel is more about a woman's coming of age in world war two south, then just about interracial relationships. her love interest, elias doesnt even come into the story until much later. but the effect he has on her is dramatic, making her realize that love is more than skin deep. the language mr. french uses is beautiful and does justice to the time and place the story is set in...

This is possibly the best novel I have ever read to date. You can truly lose yourself in this story--Holly is your best friend, your sister, your child and your lover, all at the same time. Albert French's prose is so simple yet so eloquent--it demands to be read slowly, you can imagine the narrator sitting across from you on the veranda with all the time in the world to tell you his story. If you liked this novel then you must read "Billy" and "I Can't Wait on God".

This is a great book that I found impossible to put down.The dialogue, although alien to my way of speaking flowed beautifully. I was captivated throughout the entire book