Look Back All the Green Valley: A Novel [Hardcover]

Fred Chappell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

Jess Kirkman returns to the North Carolina mountain town of his boyhood to tend to his ailing mother, and clean out his deceased father's workroom. What he discovers there leads him -- and the reader -- on an unforgettable journey through the secret life of Jess's father, Joe Robert, which culminates in a moment of profound mystery and comedy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Joe Robert Kirkman has been dead for 10 years, and his wife, Cora, is ailing when their son, poet and college professor Jess, returns to the mountains of western North Carolina in the final volume of the Kirkman saga, Chappell's chronicle of this curious Appalachian family. Strong-willed but incurably depressed, Cora has already begun preparations for her own death. Because of a mixup at the local cemetery, the family burial plot must be relocated, and Jess and his sister, Mitzi, are ordered to find a suitable new plot, for which they begin entreating neighbors who may have land to spare. Meanwhile, Jess must finally clean out his father's abandoned shed of a workshop. During the excavation, Jess discovers a map marked with the names of women, which he believes may be an adulterous "black book." He sets out to find the women in question, and to perhaps discover his father through the evidence of his sins, though what he finally unearths is both more honorable and more bizarre than anything he could have imagined. The unfolding tale is both a traditional mystery and a journey of introspection, the former shaped by oral history while the latter is governed by private memory. Both follow a pattern dictated by Jess's struggle to translate passages of Dante's Inferno, which acts here as a thematic chorus. Chappell studs his novel with autobiographical quirks (Jess writes under the pseudonym "Fred Chappell"), and narrates with his trademark voice, one both poetic and inclusive of the idioms of the Appalachian Mountain region. Fans of Chappell (Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You; Brighten the Corner Where You Are) will find this an intelligent and rewarding if sentimental closure to the Kirkman cycle. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Prolific poet/novelist Chappell again chronicles the lives of the Kirkman family, who have appeared in three previous works, most recently Farewell, I'm Bound To Leave You. Son Jess Kirkman returns to the North Carolina mountain town where he grew up because his mother is dying and there are still many loose ends associated with his late father's estate. Jess and his sister, Mitzi, must find a final resting place for both parents, and Jess must also locate his father's mysterious workshop and dispose of its contents. The treasure map and large bunch of keys he discovers in the process help Jess to know his father better after death. The townspeople's personalities and picturesque charm supply a unique perspective, and Chappell's irrepressible humor and homespun wisdom depict a long-gone way of Southern Appalachian life. A loving look back to a long-ago time and place; for public libraries and Southern fiction collections.AEllen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; 1st Picador USA ed edition (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312242158
• ISBN-13: 978-0312242152
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,937,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why LOOK BACK ALL THE GREEN VALLEY?, April 22, 2005

By 

Kirtyhep "rudy" (raleigh) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Look Back All the Green Valley: A Novel (Paperback)

Fred Chappell is an author that can create a story full of southern charm and "gentile folk" but can still have you on the edge of your seat wondering what Jess Kirkman's adventures will bring. His character development allows you to fall in love with Joe Robert while identifying with a man's quest to posthumously know his father. Chappell's books make you want to move to Appalachia and learn to play the banjo, yet contain a subtle and intellectual beauty through his use of language. If you enjoyed books such as MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL and off-beat characters, Chappell is the author for you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars favorite author., September 10, 2005

By 

Martha Ann Fraley "Kentucky girl" (Paducah, KY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Look Back All the Green Valley: A Novel (Paperback)

This is one of Chappell's best. Great images of the way the south is today.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars bittersweet, melancholy conclusion to Jess Kirkman tetrology, April 22, 2001

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Look Back All the Green Valley: A Novel (Paperback)

Written with undercurrents of loss and sadness, Fred Chappell's "Look Back All the Green Valley" completes his tetrology on life in the hidden and perhaps disappearing Appalachia of his childhood. Unlike the first three volumes, which were joyous and whimsical explorations of family and place, this final volume carries the burdens of age: the author says farewell to beloved parents and realizes that the cherished characteristics of one's home may endure only in memory and not in reality. For the Appalachia of Jess Kirkman has become vulgarized with strip malls and ersatz accents, and the improbable, imaginative and soaring stories of his father, Joe Robert, are now tinged with a subtle hurt -- a knowing sense that, ultimately, Jess must come to grips with not only his father's death, but his own mortality. This sense of finality, in the author's words, makes not only Jess, but the reader, "melancholy, homesick for times I could never reclaim, for hours that I had seemed to lose even when I had lived through them."

The narrative, as in the case of all the Jess Kirkman novels, is incidental to the story telling and character sketches. Cora Kirkman, the mother of Mitzi and Jess, the matriarch of the family, confronts a terminal illness with the knowledge that her planned burial next to her beloved, iconoclastic and fanciful husband Joe Robert will not occur due to an unfortunate oversight at an overcrowded and oversubscribed cemetary. Ultimately resolving the problem with techniques his father surely would have loved, Jess discovers yet more of his father's fertile, secret life -- schemes that treat everything from improbable travel through time and space to deciphering a map whose locations feature the names of mysterious women. Chappell's familiar mastery of the Appalachian idiom, his marvelous ability to tell a story and his unabashed respect for the people and physical environment of Appalachia appear again in this novel. What is different is the sense of finality in the writing; the novel's very title, taken from a fetching Appalachian song, denotes a sense of pespective and farewell. Though his father has been dead some ten years, it is painfully clear how fiercely Jess still loves his father and how deep, keep and present is his sense of loss. Indeed, the mournful aura of "Look Back" provides solace to any reader whose lie has been diminished by the loss of a parent and whose grief is so real that it feels freshly minted. Even laughter brought by fond memories is washed in tears.

It is this sense of summary and conclusion which ironically saps "Look Back" from the vitality and conviction of the first three volumes of the series. Joe Robert's life is much more memory and recollection than living presence, and Jess' anguish over a final farewell to his family's past hands, dirge-like, over the writing. What original stories there are in "Look Back" sparkle with tender humor and gentle wisdom; unfortunately, far too many stories are recounted with a dependence on the reader's memory of previous volumes. The multi-talented poet, essayist and novelist Fred Chappell is truly a national treasure. Though not up to the standards of his previous works, "Look Back" will add to his much-deserved reputation.