Customer Reviews

Mattaponi Queen: Stories

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The "luck" that runs like a river through MATTAPONI QUEEN by Belle Boggs is, on the surface, all hard luck, which is why some of the critics have commented that the stories are about loss. But I think that these critics do not see deeply enough;as we ride through the countryside, we may only glance at the visible corn crop or run-down house. We may need to be shown how to look more deeply at these meticulously crafted stories to see their truth and their worth, which is mighty. I think Boggs carefully plumbs the characters for what lies underneath. For instance, Skinny is not thin, but fat. And his character is not superficial, but complex and knowable. Knowing Skinny takes time; we readers do not learn about him in a flash; we get to know his children, his food, his love of his fellowmen. We find out about his marriage and its demise. We also see, in the story called "Homecoming" that Skinny befriends a high school student named Marcus who may become the school's football star with a little help. We see Skinny making Marcus's life easier with an advance on a paycheck so that Marcus can afford to buy the supplements he needs at the health food store. This is just one example of Boggs' skill of "layering" trait upon trait so that we become knowledgeable about the characters slowly, over time, in several places in more than one of her stories. She has the insight and the depth of perception to cause us, her readers, to come to some epiphanies about "real" life. So her stories could be described as neo-realism. Combined, they sketch an area of America off the beaten path as they sketch people we may not have met. But these folks are memorable because of their complexities, their foibles, their obstacles, their genuine and sometimes touching naivete. Boggs's stories are a delight. She is an amazing young woman with tremendous talent. She delights us now just as she will continue to delight in the future.

Thank god Belle Boggs's husband, Richard Allen, submitted her manuscript to Bread Loaf's Bakeless Prize competition. If not for him, who knows how long we would've had to wait for this masterful story collection about the people who live along the Mattaponi River in the small towns of eastern Virginia. Boggs is as fluid with dialogue and detail as she is with the inner lives of a wide range of country characters, including a proud but lovelorn elementary school principal, an ailing Mattaponi tribesman with a history of substance abuse, a cheerleading coach whose husband undergoes a sex change, and a Brooklyn high school sprinter who comes to live with his grandmother when his drug-dealing mother lands in jail. Even as Boggs, who grew up in King William County, maps her entire community, the world along the Mattaponi River only seems to expand the further the collection unfolds. Major characters in early stories return as peripheral figures later on, and Boggs's elegant open endings create the sense that we have only just scratched the surface of these people's yearning, if often ordinary lives.

As a lover of interconnected stories, I'm grateful to have picked up this book -- and very much looking forward to whatever Boggs writes next.

As you enter the world created by Belle Boggs, be ready to be submerged into a sense of seeing the unseen. Her work is an elegant interplay between the artistic nature of the heart of people and the subtle profound dance created by prose that gives life even as it awakens old tragedy. Boggs opens us to characters, female and male, who sometimes transcend their own frailties, and always provide a uniquely grounded view of the human condition. Because of this refreshing sense of the complexities of human nature alongside the quiet strength of what is right in the world, we come away from Mattaponi Queen a little better, a little more absorbed by the intricate nature of the world, and at last more graceful with ourselves and those around us.

An excellent and enduring collection of stories, Mattaponi Queen won the prestigious Bakeless Prize and was recently short-listed for the Frank O'Connor prize, one of the world's most recognized honors celebrating the short story.

Pick up Mattaponi Queen and encounter an author whose touch with the world is deft and delicate, quietly powerful, and capable of providing the kind of honesty and transport that make us grateful for how art can mysteriously transform life.

Belle Boggs' Mattaponi Queen is winning critical praise for its truth, its scholarship and for the light and warmth of its Mattaponi characters. This is a book that speaks directly to the heart, engages through its honesty and provides deep insight into the human condition. A delightful, intelligent volume and a stunning debut.

Nuala Galbari
Journalist

Such a pleasure to read this collection of short stories, written with grace and light. Normally a fast reader, I prolonged the book as long as I could in order to savor the characters and the language. I hope Belle Boggs hurries up and gets her next book published. In the meantime, I am telling everyone I know who loves good books to give this one a try.

I do not usually care for short stories but I tried Mattaponi Queen on the recommendation of a friend and am so glad I did. Belle Boggs writing is clean, direct and marvelously readable. I got engaged with the stories and characters immediately. They were like glimpses into real lives and a world that, while not familiar to me, had the ring to truth and was richly revealed. I hope there will be many more stories, long or short, to look forward to from Ms. Boggs.

Move over, Olive Kitteridge! Make room for Mattaponi Queen. A superb linked-story collection. Bravo, Belle Boggs!

These are the best short stories that I (who am I? New Yorker reader, former Freshman English teacher) have read in a long time; I look forward to more stories from Belle Boggs in the near future.

I was not a bit disappointed in this satisfying examination of people who live along my ancestral river, people who have been marginalized since their treaty with King George promised rights to hunting, fishing and living on the river and its wetlands, rights that were nearly lost to the unquenchable thirst of the city of Newport New, but which have now been assured forever, thanks to the protection of this pristine water way. Thanks also to Belle Boggs, who treasured and illuminated this treasure for us: unique people with unique stories she simply had to tell, people, who, thanks to tradition, could have been forgotten and never remembered again. Her keen eye, insistent need to tell a good story, and her love of place will not let this happen. Tell on, Belle.

Each of these stories is brilliant read in isolation, but read together, they create a larger, richer world that I feel privileged to have entered. There are characters here I will never forget and for whom the writer has drawn with insightfulness and compassion. Pitching certain characters from multiple angles through the stories was especially satisfying for this reader.